Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-Machine Communication (Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives) - Hardcover

Suchman, Lucy A.

9780521331371: Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-Machine Communication (Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521331374 ISBN 13: 9780521331371

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1987

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This lively and original book offers a provocative critique of the dominant assumptions regarding human action and communication which underlie recent research in machine intelligence. Lucy Suchman argues that the planning model of interaction favoured by the majority of AI researchers does not take sufficient account of the situatedness of most human social behaviour. The problems that can arise as a result are pertinently, and often amusingly, illustrated by the careful analysis of a recorded interaction between novice users and an intelligent machine, whose design has failed to accommodate essential resources of successful human communication. Plans and Situated Actions presents a compelling case for the re-examination of current models underlying interface design. Lucy Suchman's proposals for a fresh characterisation of human-computer interaction which also incorporates recent insights from the social sciences provides a challenge that everyone interested in machine intelligence will seriously need to consider.

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Review

'This book should be required reading for every serious student of computer system design.' Terry Winograd, Stanford University

'Lucy Suchman's book is a uniquely creative anthropological approach to human and machine intelligence. Her book poses a closely argued challenge to central assumptions in the cognitive sciences.' Jean Lave, University of California, Irvine

'This book should be required reading for all who deal with the study of human action, whether they be cognitive scientists interested in how people work or practitioners who wish to make systems for people to use ... A most important work.' Donald A. Norman, University of California, San Diego