Using the Human-Artifact Model, this paper is revisiting the current implications for design of ubiquity, of use being everywhere, and technological artifacts replacing and supplementing one another. I look back on seamlessness and boundary-crossing as design ideals for these kinds of technologies. Based on the dialectical methods of activity theory, I offer an alternative analysis where seamlessness and seamfulness are considered as dialectical pairs, always in play in use and appropriation of technological artifact. Using the Human-Artifact Model, the paper offers more specific dialectics on the levels of activity, action and operation.
Original language
English
Title of host publication
Proceedings of the 29th Annual European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics
