Instrument Mediated Activity

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Instrument mediated activity:

from subject development to
anthropocentric design
a b
P. Rabardel & P. Beguin
a
2 rue de la Liberté , Université paris 8 , UFR 7, 93200 Saint
Denis, France
b
41, rue Gay Lussac, CNAM , 75 005, Paris, France
c
2 rue de la Liberté , Université paris 8 , UFR 7, 93200 Saint
Denis, France E-mail:
Published online: 23 Feb 2007.
To cite this article: P. Rabardel & P. Beguin (2005) Instrument mediated activity: from subject
development to anthropocentric design, Theoretical Issues in Ergonomics Science, 6:5, 429-461,
DOI: 10.1080/14639220500078179
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14639220500078179
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Theoretical Issues in Ergonomics Science
Vol. 6, No. 5, September 2005, 429–461
Instrument mediated activity: from subject development

to anthropocentric design
P. RABARDEL*y and P. BEGUINz
y2 rue de la Liberté, Université paris 8, UFR 7, 93200 Saint Denis, France

z41, rue Gay Lussac, CNAM, 75 005, Paris, France
The aim of this article is to present the ‘instrument-mediated activity’ approach,

which is part of a ‘generative model’. A group of principles liable to contribute
to the epistemological unity of generative models is put forward as well as a

theoretical framework that conceptualizes what an instrument is for the subject.
The article develops the idea that the instrument is a mixed entity born of both the
subject and the artifact. The artifact is not an instrument in itself. It is the subject
who grants it the status of a means for his/her action. Processes of design in usage
by users are defined as ‘instrumental geneses’. Finally, the consequences of this
model on the organization of design processes are examined, in taking into
account instrumental geneses as resources for design.
Keywords: Activity theory; Instrument; Creativity; Design in use; Scheme;

Instrumental genesis
1. Introduction
This article seeks to contribute to the development of a perspective on human

activity with artifacts destined to be used as a means for activity. The aim is to
understand human activity in natural situations (i.e. work situations or situations
from everyday life) and examine the status of artifacts in the activity of subjects
who are ultimately users (professional or otherwise). Activity is considered as
‘instrument-mediated’. This approach aims to both account for the nature of
instruments mobilized by users in their activity and the processes by which they
continue design in usage.
From the outset, ergonomics has sought to contribute to the efficiency and design
of technical systems, products, machines and tools with which users can attain high
performance whilst remaining ‘intact and in good health’ (as Singleton et al. 1967,
put it). This is why a good number of the evolutions in the discipline originate in
the development of technologies. An example is the ever growing importance of the
Human Computer Interaction movement that has emerged as a result of the mass
distribution of computers since the 1980s and more recently, Computer Supported
Cooperative Work, which looks at collective work with groupwares. Thus, ergo-
nomics, more than other disciplines, is confronted with historical evolutions
relatively independent from its own development. These evolutions must be taken
into consideration in order to maintain and develop it as an action discipline.
*Corresponding author. Email: rabardel@univ-paris8.fr
Theoretical Issues in Ergonomics Science

ISSN 1463–922X print/ISSN 1464–536X online # 2005 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/14639220500078179
430 P. Rabardel and P. Beguin
Rasmussen (2000) recently drew attention to the extent of some of these current
evolutions and their theoretical consequences. As routine tasks are progressively
automated, the importance given to activity in situations and user intelligence has
constantly grown. Indeed, work as a ‘field’ has become vast and calls for problem-
solving and ‘creative improvisation’. These evolutions have significant theoretical
consequences, whose dynamics were thus defined by Rasmussen (1997): efforts are
moving from normative models of rational behaviour, through efforts to model the
observed less rational behaviour by means of models of the deviation from the
rational, towards focusing on representing directly the actual observed behaviour
and ultimately towards an effort to model behaviour-generating mechanisms.
This article will present a generative model that has been developed over 15 years.
The objective is to account for the intelligence manifested by users during their
activity in a situation and more specifically to identify the continuation of artifact
design in usage. It will define a theoretical framework within which the analysis unit
is the instrument-mediated activity. In choosing this unit, one adheres to Wertsch’s
(1998) propositions which consider mediated action as the analysis unit that retains
properties between the characteristics of individuals and those of instruments and
contexts.1 This allows one to avoid two forms of reactionary thought: forgetting that
instruments give form to the action and forgetting the individual’s activity in favour
of a mechanical determinism by tools. Like Wertsch, this analysis unit is considered
as having potential for inter-disciplinary research.
The first part of the article will define the principles on which theoretical choices
are based in reference to the literature. The second part will examine the question of
activity shaping by artifacts and propose a definition of the instrument as a mixed
entity born of both the subject and artifact. The third part will examine the question
of design processes in usage that are theorized as a process of instrumental genesis.
Finally, the fourth part will explore from which angle and to what extent activities
in which users continue design in usage are part of the design process and open up
new possibilities for contributions to ergonomics in design.
2. Principles
The development of a perspective on human activity and a new generation of models

which aims at accounting for the continuation of corresponding design in usage
(‘generative models’) is a long and exacting task. There will inevitably be multiple
models owing to the variety of situations they will address, as well as the foreseeable
diversity of theoretical references they are grounded in. However, it is felt that an
approach to activity and generative models must, despite their diversity, share a
group of principles that will ensure their coherence and epistemological unity. The
development of these principles will be a progressive task that a great number of
researchers will contribute to and one thinks it is necessary to begin now.
This is why one decided to open this presentation of the generative model
‘instrument-mediated activity approach’ with the principles constituting their
epistemological foundations. One will limit oneself here to the principles that
make up a vision of man and of man–artifact relationships, which is also felt can
be extended to generative models. Evidently, this generalization implies in-depth
exchanges and debates which are most likely to lead to elaborating on some of the
Subject development to anthropocentric design 431
principles proposed, to the emergence of principles not identified here and perhaps
even to the rejection of one or other of these principles.2
The principles presented here did not develop in a vacuum. Their origins can
be found in the work of several researchers belonging to different currents of
thought. One has attempted to reveal these roots, to render them as explicit as
possible so as to clarify their grounding in the activity approach in what is known
as French language ergonomics, and to highlight the articulations and connections
with other approaches to action and activity, namely activity theories and situated
action.
This presentation will be identical for each of the six identified principles. It will
name them and provide a succinct formulation for each. It will then elaborate
on their origins, content and some of their implications. First, the perspective is
presented from which human activities with artifacts are viewed: this is an intrinsic
view, which seeks to apprehend the subjective grasp of reality by individuals in a
situation. It will then present the four dimensions characterizing activity in a situa-
tion: inventiveness, mediation and the developmental and socially situated nature of
instrument-linked activities. The last point concerns the asymmetrical nature of
generative models.
2.1. Fostering intrinsic approaches to activity

Generative models of activity must foster intrinsic approaches to activity and seek to
identify a subject’s subjective grasp of reality. One will define the intrinsic approach
as a research position that seeks to apprehend reality from the same angle as the
subject, and to understand the activity generating mechanism on these grounds.
Intrinsic approaches are different from extrinsic approaches, which describe reality
perceived from another point of view than that of the subject(s) involved in the
action. Of course this does not mean that the knowledge produced in intrinsic
approaches must be restricted to what the subjects actually grasp of reality.
However, it must be coherent with their own view(s). The intrinsic approach to
instruments must first aim to account for the modalities of engendering the activity
and the usage of artifacts by people, as well as the modifications they potentially
impose on them to adjust them to the needs of their actions. The approach, thus,
seeks to be generative on two levels: engendering activity and usages as well as the
subject’s development of artifacts and as we will see instruments.
The distinction proposed by Norman (1991) between ‘personal view’ and ‘system
view’ is a good example of the difference between these two types of approaches.
According to the system view, the system is made up of the person, the task and the
artifact. The artifact enhances the performances of the system. The system view is
adopted by the designer and/or the researcher. In the personal view, the artifact
changes the nature of the task the person is faced with. The personal view is adopted
by the user, the person, the subject. The personal view is an intrinsic type view,
whereas the system view is an extrinsic type view.
A previous work (Rabardel 1995) also used the distinction between two possible
views: ‘technocentred’ and ‘anthropocentred’ (Lomov 1977). In the ‘technocentred’
view, where technique is given preference, the person’s activity is analysed in terms of
artifacts (extrinsic approach). In the anthropocentred view, the technical device is
examined in terms of the person’s activity and the problems he/she faces when using
the artifact in daily life or work situations (intrinsic approach).
As indicated, the system view and technocentred approaches are not the same.3
Nevertheless, in both cases they are approaches extrinsic to the activity, in contrast
to the anthropocentred and personal view approaches, which are both ‘intrinsic’.
Naturally, both intrinsic and extrinsic views have their own legitimacy and
Engeström (1990), based on Norman’s research, summarized what was at stake
here for the articulation between the design and utilization processes: it is vital
that the user be able to adopt the system view while the designer must work from
the personal view. However, this is possible only if the activity models organized
around the intrinsic view are available to the designers. This is why it is believed that
the aim of generative models of activity must be to describe subjects’ intrinsic view.
The ‘instrument-mediated activity’ approach fits into this perspective by propos-
ing an intrinsic approach to the subject’s instruments as a psychological and social

reality distinct from that of artifacts. Obviously, artifacts contain a range of con-
straints and oppositions which the subject must identify, understand and handle.
However, the aim of the intrinsic approach to instruments is primarily to account for
people’s use of artifacts and the modifications they may bring to them to adjust them
to the needs of their actions.
2.2. Inventiveness
User inventiveness and creativity are ontological characteristics of instrument use
and more generally of activity in situations. Operator inventiveness and creativity
seek to exploit the resources available in the environment of their activity and enroll
them in the service of action. Authors, such as Scribner (1986), highlighted this
dimension, showing that artifacts available in the environment play a decisive role
in solving practical problems. For instance, crates and their physical state (empty or
full) or their spatial positioning (storage organization) help solve concrete counting
and calculation problems (see also Lave 1988). To define the role of functions
attributed by subjects to objects, Scribner speaks of ‘incorporation of the environ-
ment into the problem solving system’. It is believed that this dimension must be
extended to the means of action as a whole: it is during the activity and in situation
that the user constitutes the artifact (whether physical or symbolic) as an instrument.
What is known as French language ergonomics tackled long ago the question of
inventiveness seen in users’ activity when they are faced with technique. Ombredane
and Faverge (1955), two authors often considered as the founders of French lan-
guage ergonomics, argued that: ‘while some significant aspects of the task are fore-
seen and introduced in the learning process, there is an indefinite number of others
which are unforeseen and liable to be discovered by the worker’ (p. 22). Since then,
subject inventiveness in situation has been constantly highlighted, to the extent that
one of the features of this current of ergonomics is to consider operator inventiveness
as a central component of work activity (de Montmollin 1992). Weill-Fassina et al.
(1993) synthesized this position by writing that ‘actions cannot be reduced to
the effecting of responses to stimuli received more or less passively, to motor
actions, and to execution procedures. They display the processes through which
operators explore, interpret, use, and transform their technical, social and cultural
environment’ (p. 22).
The instrument-mediated activity approach (Rabardel 1995, 2002, Verillon
and Rabardel 1995, Béguin and Rabardel 2000) belongs to this tradition
and renews it. Like others (Ehn 1989, Bannon 1991, Bannon and Bødker 1991,
Greenbaum and Kyng 1991, Henderson 1991), it is felt that usage is an integral part
of instrument design processes. The inventiveness and creativity shown by users
faced with this technique constitute a necessary condition for the efficiency of their
activity and an ontological property of the processes of users’ appropriation of
artifacts and of the continuation of design in usage.
2.3. The mediator instrument

Instruments are mediators of their users’ finalized action and activity. Usage is not
limited to interactions with a technical device. In his activity with the instrument,
the subject is consciously involved in finalized activities during which the instrument
allows the transformation of an object in order to reach a goal. Indeed, relations

between the subject and the object, on which he acts to achieve an aim, are not
direct, they are mediated. Users act ‘through the interface’ to take up the heuristic
expression of Bødker (1989). Artifacts must not only be analysed as things but also
in the way in which they mediate usage.
One has Vygotsky to thank for emphasizing the importance of mediation,
which he considers as the central fact of psychology. In a famous text from 1930,
he distinguishes mediations to the object from mediations to oneself and others. He
considers them as properties specific to two classes of instruments: technical instru-
ments and psychological instruments (Vygotsky 1930/1989). Along with others
(Resnick et al. 1991, Cole 1995), the authors think that various mediation orienta-
tions are liable to be jointly present in any instrumented activity (Rabardel 1999a).
Mediations to the object concern the subject’s action on the object and may take
two main forms:
. Epistemic mediations, oriented towards getting acquainted with the object
and its properties.
. Pragmatic mediations, oriented towards the action on the object: its transfor-
mation and handling.
Both epistemic and pragmatic components of mediations are very general and one
or other of these dimensions may be predominant, though they usually interact
constantly in the activity. For instance, the use of a chisel leads to developing
knowledge of the matter very different from the knowledge built when the wood
is transformed with a mechanical machine. During his activity with an instrument,
the subject is not only in relation with the object.
Reflexive mediations concern the relations the subject weaves with himself via
the instrument. Vygotsky put forward the enlightening example of a knot in a
handkerchief. Beach (1993) also highlighted this dimension by analysing the activity
of waiters in bars who use the position of glasses as spatial clues that enable them to
memorize customers’ orders. Reflexive mediations are very numerous with informa-
tion processing systems. For instance, when observing (Béguin 1994) draftsmen
working with CAD who used colour codes to memorize the state of ongoing
productions: one colour of a line indicated that all the problems had been processed,
another indicated that a problem remained to be processed and that modifications
had to be made. Both cases refer to reflexive mediations that allow the subject to
manage himself through an instrument.
Finally, inter-personal mediations concern mediated relationships to others. These
mediations also fit into collective contexts where productions are inter-dependent
and take on the specific nature of collaborative mediations (Béguin 1994). Using
the same example, when CAD is used in the framework of project management
involving several draftsmen, it allows such mediations. For instance, a designer
will be able to display on screen part of the information previously entered by one
of his colleagues in order to make decisions in line with what has previously been
decided. The result of the former’s work is used to guide the action of the latter.
2.4. A developmental process of instrument appropriation

Mediator instruments undergo an appropriation-development process carried out by
users. The introduction of an artifact in a given situation allows old problems to be

solved, but it changes the nature of the task and creates new problems requiring
new instruments (Nardi 1996). Along with others (Leont’ev 1978, Bedny and Meister
1997, Wertsch 1998), the authors think that appropriation,4 understood as inscrip-
tion in individual and collective uses, constitutes a specific process of construction-
reconstruction of uses and devices. This study proposes defining this process by
articulating the genetic epistemology of the Piaget school and activity theories.
Indeed, one thinks that the Piaget and post-Piaget theoretical perspectives on the
role of action and activity in the genesis of knowledge and conceptualization must be
brought together, with the central role given to mediation by cultural artifacts in
activity theories. In this perspective, this study proposes defining a productive
dimension and a constructive dimension of the activity.
The productive dimension of instrument-mediated activity comes from the fact
that the subject pursues objectives and aspires to reaching goals. This activity has
a triple orientation: towards the object, towards others and towards himself.
Simultaneously to this productive dimension of the activity, subjects develop
activities with a constructive finality, their instruments (in their psychological and
material components), their resources (skills, conceptualizations, representations . . .)
as well as conditions for their productive activity (Rabardel and Samurçay 2001).
Constructive activities are both individual and collective. These two dimensions
of the activity, productive and constructive, maintain dialectic relations: the failure
or oppositions encountered on the level of productive activity lead to new develop-
ments on the level of constructive activity, which modify in turn the productive
activities and their conditions. However, as will be seen in the tailoring section,
the development of instruments and more generally of the subject’s resources has
several origins.
2.5. The situated instrument, both social and cultural

Instrument-mediated activity is always situated; instruments are culturally marked
and their uses socially assigned. Wisner (1995) drew ergonomists’ attention to the
importance of action and cognition situated approaches for the discipline. The
authors share this conviction and think that the organization of action and activity
must be analysed in avoiding two pitfalls.
The first one would consist of apprehending the subject’s activity in the frame-
work of a positivist approach to human functioning, independently of the material,
social and cultural conditions in which the action5 takes place. This approach is in
conflict with ergonomics in that it leaves little place for apprehending the influence
of technical systems or social organization of the situations on subjects’ functioning.
The second pitfall would consist of apprehending ‘operators’ activity in the
framework of a ‘situations logic’, as defined by Poppers (1998), i.e. of an approach
consisting essentially of analysing the situation of the acting subject sufficiently
to be able to explain his action based on the situation. In the authors’ opinion,
a ‘situations logic’ eliminates the finalized subject and describes a subject acting
according to fluctuating circumstances rather than an actor.
With the instrument-mediated activity approach, subjects’ constructions occur
within socially built situations whose peculiarities must be respected. Mediated
action is constructed within and is part of local circumstances. It is part of local
circumstances because it is considered that the organization of the action relies on

the exploitation of resources and objects available in the environment6 (Scribner
1986, Lave 1988). However, it is also constructed in that it is individuals who
grant the artifacts available in the situation the status of resource for the action.
For example, glasses used by the waiters to memorize orders (Beach 1993) are not
necessarily a means of action. It is the subject who grants them this status. This is
why it is considered as heuristic the distinction put forward by Lave (1988) between
‘arena’, referring to the situation as given and ‘setting’, referring to the situation built
in and for the action.
The development of instruments, in their internal aspects, specific to the subjects,
as well as in their external aspects, specific to the artifact, is not born of isolated
users. Wallon (1942) and Vygotsky (1934/1962) amply emphasized that from the
outset the subject is assigned to an environment made up of tools and produce,
resulting from socio-cultural evolution, and which are made available to each
individual. In this respect, any artifact implies a socio-cultural heritage (Leont’ev
1972, Engeström 1990, Cole 1995, Wertsch 1998).
Finally, both the artifact and the usage individuals attribute to it are socially
situated. Bannon (1991), for instance, showed that usages are shared among a social
group or a work group, because they are developed in the course of a process where
individuals are not isolated. Beyond that, usages are the object of more or less
formalized transmissions: information passed on from one user to the other; training
structured around complex technical systems, for instance during simulation sessions
as well as various types of aids to the users such as handbooks and instruction
manuals (Rabardel 1995, 2002, De Keyser and Samurçay 1998).
2.6. Asymmetry
Generative models must acknowledge the asymmetry of the subject-artifact relation-
ship. The intrinsic approach consists in placing both the subject’s activity and his
subjective view at the forefront of the analysis. It is the subject who gives a meaning
to the artifact by developing it as an instrument of his activity (Bedny and
Karwowski 2004). The symmetrical proposition provokes a smile: it is the artifact
that grants the user the status of subject. There is neither equivalence nor symmetry
between the user and the artifact. This is why the instrument-mediated activity
approach is fundamentally asymmetrical in nature and it is felt, therefore, that it
must be a characteristic of generative models.
Symmetrical type approaches, for instance, those which consider man and
artifact as cognitive systems in interaction, are sterile because they imply that
the equivalence sought is grounded in the reduction of both terms to merely the
cognitive dimension. Here, both man and artifact lose their identity. For example,
Hoc (2000) recently proposed replacing the term ‘man–machine interaction’ with the
term ‘man–machine communication’. The idea is that man and machine entertain
interactions which could be modelized in the framework of human interactions,
each entity being thus considered as an ‘actor’ in the system. This approach,
presented as novel, was nevertheless invalidated on highly documented empirical
grounds. Suchman (1987), in particular, has shown the irreducible nature of social
interactions with respect to interactions with machines. Interaction with a material
device is not comparable with what is observed during human interactions in which
the subjects use ‘ethnomethods’ that aspire to a common construction of the context
(namely the repair mechanisms or indexicalization).

On a theoretical level, symmetrization proposes apprehending the different com-
ponents of a system in a unitary conceptual framework, where human being and
machine are reduced to a common denominator. This epistemological reductionism
does not seem very heuristic to the authors and it is difficult to support in a research
perspective. Centring analysis exclusively on cognitive dimensions eliminates the
status of the body and the meaning subjects attribute to situations. Norman’s
(1988, 1992) view, which considers that the study of ‘disembodied intelligence’ is
hardly a domain for the future is shared here.
However, in the perspective of action, which is the case of ergonomics, consider-
ing the body and the meaning constructed in the situation as irrelevant or cumber-
some variables is even less possible. Owing to its systemic character, ergonomic
action necessarily impacts on the dimensions of the activity as a whole. Whether
the actors want it or not, action is intrinsically holistic. That is why it is felt that the
aim of generative models must be to acknowledge asymmetry between human beings
and artifacts. In considering artifacts as mediators, activity theories belong to this
type (Nardi 1996, Bødker and Graves Petersen 2000).
3. Shaping of the activity by artifacts
One of the main theoretical and pragmatic problems for ergonomics is understand-
ing how artifacts contribute to subjects’ shaping of action and activity. This question
will be examined in first distinguishing several types of constraints and modalities of
shaping that define an open space of possibilities within which the subject elaborates
the actions of his/her activity. This study will then analyse a second important source
of activity shaping: utilization schemes, whose characteristics will be analysed.
Finally, this section will be concluded with a definition of the instrument as a
mixed entity born of both schemes and artifacts.
3.1. Constraints intrinsic to the artifact

The artifact comprises a set of constraints that the subject has to manage according
to the specificity of each of his actions. Constraints are clearly different depending
on the types of activity performed with the artifact. For instance, in an artifact-
assembling task, the subject must take into account the structural constraints in
order to position the parts with respect to one another, whereas in a maintenance
task of the same artifact, preference will be given to functioning constraints.
This study proposes defining three types of constraints intrinsic to the artifact, which
are of a structuring nature for the subject’s activity. These are related to:
. the properties of the artifact as a physical or cognitive object or ‘modalities of
existence constraints’;
. the objects it can act on, and the transformations it can carry out or
‘finalization constraints’; and
. the structuring of the user’s action or ‘action pre-structuring constraints’.
One will now elaborate on these. Like any reality, the artifact confronts the subject
with a set of constraints that he must simultaneously identify, understand and
manage. In this respect, the artifact partakes of the world of objects in the philoso-
phical sense of the term, with the specific features of technical objects. Thus, a PC
user’s activity depends on the interaction constraints specific to the interface. A truck
driver constantly manages his vehicle to ensure that it is in good working order.
These constraints are called ‘existence modality constraints’.
However, the artifact also carries constraints concerning the nature of the objects
of activity it can act on, as well as the modalities it organizes for the transformation
of objects. These are constraints linked to the finalization specific to the artifact,
whereas existence modality constraints are linked to the general characteristics
common to physical objects as a whole. On this level, constraints are linked to the
specificity of the artifact intended to produce transformations. A metal lathe,
for instance, can only perform transformations of matter through the removal of
turnings. The machine defines the classes of transformations, of possible changes of
states and the conditions for these changes of states. These transformations can only
be applied to certain classes of objects, which have specific properties. For the lathe,
they are of course metal objects (but it is likely that not all of them can be turned:
for instance, conditions of hardness must be respected). Extensions of usage to other
types of objects with similar properties (e.g. hard plastics) may be considered, but
the class of objects on which transformations can be operated via the artifact
remains limited in any case. These constraints are called ‘finalization constraints’.
Finally, as far as the subject is concerned, the artifact carries more or less explicit
action pre-structuring constraints. Action pre-structuring is the result of the user’s
position and modalities of action, operating modes, etc., which designers anticipate
and incorporate into the functioning of the artifact. This study will call them ‘action
pre-structuring constraints’. This dimension has always been present, but today it is
gaining importance in certain fields. Thus, De Terssac (1992) stressed that expert
systems involve a positioning of the operator and a more or less explicit form of
regulation of his actions and activity which tend to reduce his own regulating pos-
sibilities. A share of the constraints of the artifact’s pre-structuring of the action
concerns the axiological dimensions of the action,7 either because norms or values
are constitutive of the artifact and force themselves implicitly on the subject in an
instrumental relationship or because, in an aid relationship, the machine’s function
is often to produce assessments related to the subject’s actions and activity.
3.1.1. Multi-modality of shaping by artifacts. Different types of constraints intrinsic

to the artifact contribute to the subject’s action and activity shaping following
a range of modalities. The nature of the subject’s interactions with the artifact is
a differentiating dimension of the action and activity shaping modalities in

and through the use of artifacts. One proposes characterizing several modalities of
activity shaping by the artifact.
. Simple shaping: The artifact demands that the activity be structured around
the form it constitutes. This is the case of hand tools that do not have a
functioning of their own. It is also the case of artifacts with a functioning
that the subject can overlook for its use (for instance a simple watch).
. Organized shaping: The operator’s intervention fits into a procedural organi-
zation process (dependent on functioning specific to the artifact) which assigns
it a temporal place (i.e. work under time constraints), a spatial place (by
defining the site of his actions) and an operating place (by defining the nature
of the actions and the organization of their sequencing). In the domain of daily
life, a programmer (of heating systems, ovens, video recorders, etc.) is a good
example of this type of action shaping: the user must follow a precise operating
mode which determines success.
. Active shaping: In this case the artifact has knowledge of the operator (defi-
nitive knowledge or knowledge progressively updated) and its role is to modify
his functioning or to influence his activity (an expert system producing a
diagnosis) or even to transform man himself (for instance certain teaching
machines). Active shaping can be mutual in that the artifact adapts itself
to the operator as it knows him and at the same time tends to influence him
or force on him certain characteristics of its own modalities and functioning
criteria.
3.1.2. Space of possibilities. The different types of constraints and various shaping
modalities do not mechanically determine the subject’s action and activity. They
define an ‘open space of possibilities’ within which the subject develops his actions
according to his objectives and motivations and also in line with his own character-
istics (Rabardel 1991, 1995, 2002). Vicente (1999) recently highlighted the import-
ance of an open space of possibilities as a principle for design. An artifact must let
a dynamic space of functional action possibilities, giving users the possibility to
finish the design. One will come back later on this important proposal (see x 5.1.2).
3.2. Another source of shaping: Utilization schemes

This analysis would be inadequate if restricting it to the structuring effects of
the activity linked to artifacts. Another source of activity shaping comes from the
activity’s variants that are mobilized by the subject in action (Vygotsky 1984). Piaget
and his successors (particularly Vergnaud 1996) developed the concept of action
scheme that will serve as a base for what follows.8 Action schemes have both private
and social dimensions and are located at several levels: that of the utilization activity;
that of the actions in which the instrument is introduced as a means; that of
the co-ordination of actions between different actors, men and machines. The
introduction of the scheme dimension, along with the artifact dimension, helps
one to move from the idea of unilateral activity shaping by the artifact to that
of pre-structuring of a broader and far less mechanistic nature since it pertains
both to the subject’s resources and the characteristics of the artifact.
3.2.1. What is a scheme? For Piaget, schemes are behaviour organizers; they are
the framework of actions liable to be actively repeated.9 An action scheme is the
structured set of action features which can be generalized, i.e. which make it possible
to repeat the same action or to apply it to new contents (Piaget and Beth 1961).
Any scheme constitutes a whole or a set of mutually dependent components, which
cannot function without each other: they are mutually involved. It is the global
meaning of the action that ensures the simultaneous existence of the relationships
that make up the schemes as a whole.
A scheme is the active organization of actual experience which integrates the
past. Therefore, it is a structure with a past, which changes as it adapts to more
diversified situations and data. A scheme is applied to the diversity of the outside
environment and is generalized according to the situations it is applied to.

The history of a scheme is that of its continuous generalization as well as of its
differentiation.
. once they are constituted, schemes serve as means for the organizing activity.
They make it possible to assign goals to actions, to be their means and to
assign a meaning to the adventures of experience. Thus, new objects, assimi-
lated by schemes as a result of their similarity in appearance or situation, are
assigned meanings while contributing both to the extension of these meanings
and the transformation of new meaning networks; and
. furthermore, schemes adapt to outside reality, which they find difficult to
assimilate, as well as to other schemes. Adaptation is one of the sources of
progressive differentiation.
The development relies, therefore, on two complementary processes: The integration
of things or environment to the organization of scheme, namely the ‘assimilation’
process; the adaptation or reorganization of scheme to things or environment,
namely an ‘accommodation’ process.
3.2.2. Utilization schemes. The notion of utilization schemes and the different
types of schemes which make up the class of utilization schemes are now defined.
Utilization schemes pertain to two dimensions of the activity.
. Activities related to ‘secondary’ tasks, i.e. related to the management of
characteristics and properties specific to the artifact. In this example, the
elementary utilization schemes for the handling of the control knob are located
at this level.
. Primary activities or main activities oriented towards the object of the activity
and for which the artifact is a means of performance. The adjustment scheme
of the seat as a whole is located at this level. Coherence of the whole is insured,
following Piaget’s formula, by the global meaning of the action: adjusting the
seat.
This leads one to define, in a first stage, two levels of schemes within utilization
schemes.
. Usage schemes related to ‘secondary tasks’. These can, as in this example,
be located at the level of elementary schemes (meaning they cannot be broken
into smaller units liable to meet an identifiable sub-goal), but it is by no means
necessary: they can themselves be constituted as wholes articulating a set of
elementary schemes. Their distinctive feature is that they are orientated

towards secondary tasks corresponding to the specific actions and activities
directly related to the artifact.
. Instrument-mediated action schemes, which consist of wholes deriving their
meaning from the global action which aims at operating transformations on
the object of activity. These schemes incorporate usage schemes as consti-
tuents. Their distinctive feature is their relation to ‘primary tasks’. They make
up what Vygotsky (1930/1981) called ‘instrumental acts’, which, owing to the
introduction of the instrument, involve a restructuring of the activity directed
towards the subject’s main goal. According to Cellérier’s (1979a, b) terminol-
ogy, usage schemes constitute specialized modules, which, in co-ordination
with one another and also with other schemes, assimilate and mutually
adapt in order to constitute instrument-mediated action schemes.
Let’s take an example. For an experienced driver, overtaking a vehicle is a type
of action which comprises identifiable invariants: analysis of the situation to deter-
mine the appropriate moment, indication of his intention to overtake, change of
gears if necessary, change in the vehicle’s trajectory, etc. An instrument-mediated
action scheme underlies the invariant aspects of such an overtaking situation.
This scheme incorporates as components usage schemes sub-ordinate to its general
organization, such as those necessary to manage a change of gears or a change of
trajectory.
What emerges from the criteria used to define schemes (their relationship to
a main or secondary task) is that the nature of a usage scheme or an instrument-
mediated action scheme does not refer to a property of the scheme in itself, but to its
status within the subject’s finalized activity. Thus, the same scheme may, depending
on the situation, have the status of a usage scheme (for instance, changing gears in
the overtaking example) or that of an instrument-mediated action
scheme (for instance, for a beginner, where the question is learning how to change
gears).10
The analysis of schemes involved in instrument-mediated activities cannot be
limited to a single individual subject. Indeed, instrumental usage is often located
in the context of a collective activity, in particular in the workplace. A same artifact
(or even a class of artifacts) can be used simultaneously or jointly by a group of
workers to carry out a common or shared task. While it is obvious that the subjects
introduced in this collective activity implement utilization schemes corresponding
to the various types referred to above, it is no less obvious that the collective nature
of the activity, besides exceptions, calls for the constitution and implementation of
specific schemes.
A third level of schemes must, therefore, be considered: that of instrument-
mediated collective activity schemes. These concern the specification of the types of
action or activity, of the types of acceptable results, etc., when the group shares the
same instrument or works with the same class of instruments. They also concern the
co-ordination of individual actions and integration of their results as a contribution
to the achievement of common goals.
The different types of schemes just defined (usage scheme, instrument-mediated
action schemes and instrument-mediated collective activity scheme) make up the
class of utilization schemes. Utilization schemes have both private, i.e. they are
specific to each individual, and social existence modalities.
3.2.3. Utilization schemes, both private and social. The private dimension comes
from the particular nature of the historical background and the development of
schemes by each one. Thus, it is characteristics specific to each individual, such as
handwriting schemes, that make handwriting specific and recognizable.
The social dimension comes from the fact that schemes develop in the course of a
process in which the subject is not isolated. Other users, as well as artifact designers,
contribute to this emergence of schemes. Schemes are shared among practitioners
of a same skill and among broader social groups. They are ‘shared assets’ built up
through the creations of individuals or groups. They are also the object of more or
less formalized transmissions and transfers: information passed on from one user to
another; training structured around complex technical systems; various types of
users’ support (instruction manuals, users’ guides and various other supports intro-
duced or not in the artifact itself). Therefore, the social nature of schemes can by
no means be confused with the fact that some of them are related to instrument-
mediated collective activities. Utilization schemes are both private and social.
3.2.4. Characteristics of utilization schemes. This study will now look in greater
detail at the shared characteristics of social utilization schemes.
As with any scheme, they constitute frameworks that assimilate situations the
subject is confronted with. They make it possible to assign meanings to objects
according to the orientation of the subject’s activity and tasks. They also make it
possible to assign them a status both in terms of goals and sub-goals, of states,
changes of states and transformations that can be operated on the objects and in
terms of means, i.e. of instruments relevant to possible actions. Utilization schemes
are linked to artifacts which are liable to have the status of means, to the objects
these artifacts make it possible to act on and to action situations. They are organizers
of the action, utilization, implementation and usage of the artifact. They take
into account and rely on the properties and constraints of the artifact, which are
themselves organizers, as has been seen above.
However, utilization schemes cannot be applied directly. They must be adapted
to the specificity of each situation. They are implemented in the form of a procedure
relevant to the particularities of the situation.
These particularities can be limited to classes of familiar situations where the
artifacts associated with the utilization schemes as well as the objects and their
transformations are well known and identified by the subject. Operating invariants
are constituted, at least in part, by a structured set of variables which are charac-
teristic of the class of situations. The assimilation process leads to establishing
the particular value of the variables according to the characteristics specific to the
situation. Utilization schemes can then be considered as easy to activate, familiar
schemes that contribute to the ‘automated’ functioning that typifies well-mastered,
common situations.
The implementation of utilization schemes in new but similar situations (assim-
ilation process) leads to the generalization of schemes by extension of the classes
of situations, of artifacts and objects they are relevant to. It also leads to their
differentiation, since most often they have to change to adapt to new and different
aspects specific to situations (adaptation process). In situations very new to the
subject,11 the adaptation process becomes temporarily predominant. It leads to
the transformation of available schemes, to their reorganization, fragmentation
and restructuring, mutual assimilation and co-ordination, which gradually produces
new scheme compositions allowing renewed and reproducible mastery of the new
class of situations. Such mechanisms emerge, for instance, when new artifacts must
be used as means of action or when the action focuses on new objects or new
transformations of these objects. The assimilation of new objects and new artifacts
in utilization schemes, source of both generalization and adaptation differentiation,
leads to the enrichment and development of the subject’s network of meanings,
within which the artifacts, objects and utilization schemes, are closely associated.
3.3. The instrument, a mixed entity

One now has the necessary foundations to propose a psychological definition of

the instrument. The essential point of this definition is that the instrument cannot
be reduced to the artifact, the technical object or the machine, depending on the
terminology employed. The instrument may be defined as a mixed entity, born of
both the subject and object (in the philosophical sense of the term): the instrument
is a composite entity made up of an artifact component (an artifact, the fraction of
an artifact or a set of artifacts) and a scheme component (one or more utilization
schemes, often linked to more general action schemes). An instrument therefore
consists of two types of entities:
. a physical or symbolic artifact produced by the subject or others, and
. one or more associated utilization schemes, resulting from an autonomous
construction specific to the subject or from an appropriation of social utiliza-
tion schemes already formed outside of him.
One is, therefore, led to extend Mounoud’s (1970) definition according to which an
instrument can be any object the subject associates with his action to perform a task.
It is not only the artifact associated and associable by the subject with his action for
the performance of the task, it is also the utilization schemes that will allow the
introduction of an instrument as a functional component of the subject’s action. This
definition of the instrument allows one to overcome the seeming contradiction which
may arise between approaches which grant the status of instrument exclusively to
objects external to the subject (artifacts) or restrict the status of instrument to the
subject’s schemes. Both these symmetrical options lead to almost completely negat-
ing one of the two components of the instrumental entity.
The two components of the instrument, artifact and scheme, are associated with
each other, but they also have a relationship of relative independence. A same
utilization scheme can be applied to a range of artifacts belonging to the same
class (such as car driving schemes transposed by the subject from one car to another)
and also be relevant to similar or different classes (often not without problems).
Conversely, an artifact is liable to be integrated into a range of utilization schemes,
which will sometimes assign it different meanings and functions. Everyone has
examples in mind such as the association of the scheme ‘strike’ with a wrench,
turning it into an instrument with the same function as a hammer, or even . . . a
blunt instrument. The constituted instrument can be ephemeral, linked only to the
particular circumstances and conditions of a situation the subject is confronted with,
but it can also be of a more permanent nature and be retained as a whole as a means
available for future actions. This dynamic whole will, of course, develop in line
with other action situations in which the subject will involve the instrument.
However, how can the instrument thus defined occupy an intermediary, mediat-
ing position between the subject and object, since, as both scheme and artifact it
pertains to both? The answer to this question is to be sought in the relation of the
instrument to the action. The subject institutes certain components of his environ-
ment as instruments according to his goal, i.e. as means for his action. The instru-
mental position of the artifact is relative to its status within the action. The artifact is
not an instrument or an instrument component in itself (even when it was initially
designed as such); it is instituted as an instrument by the subject who gives it the
status of means to achieve the goals of his action. In this respect, artifacts integrate
the activity and bring about more or less significant reorganizations. Thus, the same
artifact can have very different instrumental statuses depending on the subjects and
even for an individual subject, depending on the situation and even moments of this
situation.
For the subjects, an artifact is enriched by the action situations it has been
circumstantially involved in, specifically as a means of their action. This is how
the instrumental field of the artifact comes to being for the subject: the set of artifact
utilization schemes it can be introduced into in order to form an instrument; the set
of objects it allows the subject to act on; the set of transformations and changes of
states it allows the subject to perform. Artifact utilization schemes become richer and
more varied with the development of the artifact’s instrumental field. They develop
with the range of artifacts they are associated with to form an instrument and with
the range of statuses they may take on within this association.
A permanent instrument, liable to be reused, thus consists of the stabilized
association of two invariants (or classes of invariants) which jointly constitute a
potential means for management and action within a situation. However, this
throws up the problem of the constitution of the instrument and its genesis, i.e.
the problem of the constitution of its two invariants, scheme and artifact. Be it
the scheme or the artifact, this construction does not usually occur in a vacuum.
Most often the artifacts already exist, but the subject has to instrumentalize them.
Schemes come most often from the subject’s repertory and are generalized or adapted
to the new artifact. Sometimes, entirely new schemes must be constructed: these
processes as a whole can be defined in terms of instrumental genesis. These instru-
mental geneses and the process of instrumentation and instrumentalization will
now be examined.
4. Tailoring and instrumental genesis
The reorganization and restructuring of instrument-linked activity follows two

opposite yet complementary orientations. It springs from the constraints specific
to the artifact and schemes which together shape the subjects’ activity (see x 3.3)
as well as the development potentialities of the activity and action available to the
subject. It is this second dimension one will deal with here, starting with a long
identified phenomenon in ergonomics literature: catachreses.
The term catachrese is borrowed from linguistics and rhetoric where it refers to
the use of a word beyond its accepted use or instead of another one. By extension,
the idea was transposed to the domain of tools to refer to the use of one tool instead
of another or the use of tools for uses they were not designed for. Faverge (1970)
gives as an example of catachrese, a wrench used for striking instead of a hammer.
Catachreses are commonly interpreted in terms of misappropriation of an artifact

with respect to the functions and usage planned by the designers. They may become
a problem by creating dangerous situations. Thus, Winsemius (1969) indicated that
catachreses and the informal usage of tools could be the source of a number of
accidents. Rabardel (1995) and Rabardel and Duvenci-Langa (2002) proposed
moving beyond this approach centred on consequences to consider catachreses as
indicators of the users’ contribution to design in use.
The existence of catachreses is a testimony to the subject’s creation of means
more suited to the ends he or she is striving to achieve, to the user’s construction of
instruments to be incorporated into the activity in accordance with current goals.
These processes may be relatively elementary, as in using the artifact ‘wrench’ as a
hammer when associated with the hammering scheme. They may also be large-scale
processes that develop over a period of years, during which users tailor their
instrument (artifact, in term of structure and form and/or utilization scheme).
Continuation of design within activity must, in the authors’ opinion, be considered
as an intrinsic characteristic of human activity: it reflects the production of instru-
ments and more generally of means of action. That is why this study speaks of
‘instrumental genesis’ (Rabardel 1991, Verillon and Rabardel 1995).
4.1. Instrumental genesis

In this approach, the instrument is a mixed entity made up of both schemes
and artifacts. Instrumental geneses can, therefore, bear on both aspects of the
entity. For instance, Cook et al. (1991) noticed this bipolarity while analysing
the usage of a monitoring system in heart surgery. They showed that instrumental
tailoring involves either a modification of the activity or transformations of the
technical system. Instrumental geneses may involve the modification of schemes
that are refered to as instrumentation. Instrumentation concerns the emergence
and development of utilization and instrumented action schemes: their construction,
development through adaptation, the assimilation of new artifacts in already
constituted schemes, etc. Instrumental geneses may also lead to modifications of
the artifact or instrumentalization. Instrumentalization concerns the emergence and
development of the instrument artifact components: selection, regrouping, pro-
duction of functions, catachreses, assignment of properties, transformation of the
artifact, which continue the artifact’s design in usage. This study will now examine
both these aspects of instrumental genesis processes more closely.
4.2. Instrumentalization
Instrumentalization may be defined as a process in which the subject enriches the
artifact’s properties. This process relies on the characteristics and properties of the
artifact and assigns them a status in line with the ongoing action and situation
(in Faverge’s example: the mass of the wrench replacing the hammer). In studies
carried out on instrument structuring among children, Mounoud (1970) came up
with results which may clarify instrumentalization modalities. Children placed in
problem-solving situations had to construct artifacts in order to resolve these prob-
lems. The artifacts developed by the children in situation comprise functions, which
Mounoud calls constituents, particularly related to the characteristics and properties
of the action the children anticipate. However, the children progressively upgrade
these functions to better adapt them to the situation. Finally, when instrumental
genesis has been completed, the artifacts fulfil constituted functions, progressively
assigned to them by the children.
Mounoud’s formulation seems to be particularly heuristic. Indeed, the character-
istic of the artifacts the subjects are confronted with in ‘natural’ situations (work,
training, daily life) is precisely that they are developed in order to fulfil pre-defined
functions that make up the artifact. In keeping with Mounoud’s terms, one proposes
calling these functions constituent functions. Instrumentalization of the artifact
brings about new functions, temporarily or more permanently. These new functions
are developed in the course of instrumental genesis. One proposes referring to them
as constituted functions.
In the simple example of a subject using a wrench as a hammer, the function is
constituted temporarily: the wrench only momentarily acquires the function of a

hammer. However, there is a second level of instrumentalization where the function
is constituted more permanently. One was able to observe such a process during
the design of an alarm, initially conceived as a safety instrumented system to assist
operators in the management of chemical processes which may lead to disastrous
explosions (sites classified SEVESO: Béguin et al. 1999). In the event of reaction
over-speed, the device assesses the Time Left before Explosion (TMR). The interface
displays both TMR and temperature. When the device was introduced on a pilot site,
the operators used it as a precision thermometer instead of a safety alarm. Indeed,
the information on temperature provided by the safety instrumented system was
analogical. That is why it reflected temperature variations more accurately and
was better suited to the operation of the process than previously available digital
thermometers. This study will come back later to this example in greater details
(x 5.3.3).
Finally, at a third level, instrumentalization of the artifact may involve its modi-
fication to adapt it to the specificity of a situation (Rabardel 2001). For instance,
car mechanics use numerous wrenches, which are deliberately bent or filed, in order
to reach otherwise inaccessible nuts. In this case, it is the structure of the artifact that
is modified. Instrumentalizations can also bear on the functioning of the artifact. The
constitution of complex functions (macro) through the combination of elementary
functions is an example found in the field of software packages.
Three instrumentalization levels of an artifact are distinguished in these
examples:
. on a first level, instrumentalization is local, linked to a particular action and
the circumstances of its progress. The artifact is momentarily instrumentalized;
. on a second level, the constituted function is maintained durably as a property
of the artifact in relation with a class of actions, objects of activity and situa-
tions. Instrumentalization is durable, if not permanent. In either case, there is
no physical transformation of the artifact itself. It has merely been enriched
with new properties acquired momentarily or durably; and
. finally, on a third level, instrumentalization involves a modification of the
functioning and/or structure of the artifact. Here too, the constituted function
is maintained in time.
The authors would like to stress the very general nature of instrumentalization
processes. They are not limited to artifacts of a technological nature. Thus,
Falzon (1989) highlights the fact that operative languages are the product of a
transformation, carried out by the operators themselves, of the general system of
representation that is a language, in order to adapt it to the specificity of their

communication needs.12 Ifrah (1985) also provides a good example of instrumenta-
lization in the domain of numeration. The Mayas’ oral numeration system was
strictly in multiples of 20. However, astronomers from this civilization used a
system which included an exception: instead of referring to multiples of 400, the
third rank referred to multiples of 360. This irregularity was developed by astron-
omers for the specific requirements of time measurement: days being regrouped
into 20 day months and then 18 month years, i.e. 360 days. Instrumentalization of
the artifact through enrichment of properties or modification of its structure or
functioning thus appears to be a very common phenomenon, not at all limited to
technological artifacts.
4.3. Instrumentation
The genesis of schemes, the assimilation of new artifacts to schemes (giving a new
meaning to the artifacts) and the adaptation of schemes (contributing to their change
of meaning) make up the second dimension of instrumental genesis: instrumentation.
Utilization schemes, like all schemes, have the ability to both assimilate and
adapt. The example of the wrench used as a hammer is particularly representative
of the assimilative function of schemes in instrumental geneses. The hammer instru-
ment is already constituted for the user who performs this catachrese. The striking
scheme is formed and associated with a class of artifact: hammers. At the time of
action, since no item of this class of artifact is available, the subject takes hold of
another artifact (the wrench) to associate it with the striking scheme, momentarily
constituting an acceptable tool for the circumstances. He does not take just any
artifact. Its properties have to be relatively specific: prehensibility, length of the
lever arm, mass, hardness of the part intended for striking. It is the pre-existing
utilization scheme which enables him to both recognize the presence of these differ-
ent characteristics in the wrench in order to assign it the meaning of a hammer
artifact, and to locally adjust the nature of his action in line with the properties
specific to the wrench. The instrumentation consists here of a direct assimilation of
the artifact into the utilization scheme. This assimilation changes the meaning of the
artifact.
Often, however, this assimilation process cannot be implemented or, when it is,
it leads to problematic situations. Adaptation of the schemes then takes place, as will
be seen in a second example (Galinier 1997). The example concerns a semi-automatic
truck gearbox. It features a computer linked to the conventional mechanism of a
traditional gearbox, a display and a selector in the cabin. The computer processes the
information provided by the various sensors and sends back the recommended gear
ratios to the display in line with the haulage conditions and the state of the vehicle’s
drive chain. If the driver accepts the suggestion made by the computer, he depresses
the clutch pedal and a beep sound tells him when the gear is in shift. He can then
release the pedal. However, drivers have already developed driving schemes with
a manual gearbox. These schemes will have to be progressively upgraded so they
dispose of an adapted instrument. This upgrading for stop-start situations will be
examined. Initially, the instrument-mediated activity scheme is directly transposed
from the driving situation with a manual gearbox. The driver assimilates the
new gearbox to the previous scheme: he depresses the clutch pedal (D) and lets
the computer select the gear ratio by default (As) or attempts to select a gear
manually (Ms) and then releases the clutch (R). This scheme, which is called ‘old
scheme’, symbolized by (D>As/Ms>R), leads to many system breakdowns.
In the second phase of the instrumental genesis process, the ‘old scheme’ is
maintained, but a second scheme appears and co-ordinates with the previous one.
The resulting instrument-mediated activity scheme consists of two articulated
schemes:
. The first one manages the stopping phase: depressing pedal, shift into neutral
(N), releasing the clutch: (D>N>R), this is called the ‘stopping scheme’.
. The second one manages the start phase: (D>As/Ms>R); this is the ‘old
scheme’.
The new instrument-mediated activity scheme, symbolized by (D>N>R) þ(D>As/

Ms>R) allows a reduction in problems without eliminating them. Finally, in a third
step, the ‘old scheme’ component disappears and two new schemes appear. The
resulting utilization scheme consists of three articulated schemes.
. The first one is the previous ‘stopping scheme’: (D>N>R).
. The second one manages the starting programme by pre-selecting a gear (Ms):
‘selection scheme’.
. The third one manages the starting phase: depressing the pedal, pedal release
(D>R): ‘validation scheme’.
The instrument-mediated activity, symbolized by (D>N>R) þ (Ms) þ (D>R)
allows the driver to avoid any problem.
In this example (presented in more details in Galinier (1997)), the instrumental
genesis process takes place over several days,13 but instrumental geneses can
take much longer as will be demonstrated through a third example related to the
utilization of a medical diagnosis tool: the ultrasound scan.
Ultrasound interpretation is performed based on dynamic images, built by the
physician through the adjustment of the device and handling of the probe. The probe
and adjustments are the two artifacts allowing the exploration and production
of moving images of the patient’s organs. A study carried out by Ragazzini (1992)
highlights the evolution of instrument-mediated activity schemes through the
comparison of beginners and experts, particularly in the utilization of the probe.
With beginners, exploration is based on a rigid scheme aiming at identifying organs
through anatomical proximity. Beginners take their marks from organs near the one
to be explored so they are sure of localizing it correctly. Only then do they explore
the organ and make a diagnosis. With experts, however, the exploration is oriented
from the outset toward diagnosing the pathology. It relies on a scheme of compar-
ison between the organ to be explored and reference organs, which may be
anatomically distant from the former. They are chosen because they have the
same echographic characteristics as the organ to be explored. The comparison
allows the doctor to immediately identify the presence or absence of a pathological
disturbance. The next stage of the examination will indicate its nature. Here,
instrumental genesis takes place over a period of time: the years necessary to develop
expertise. It is through the evolution of the exploration schemes that the beginner’s
instrument develops into that of the expert.
Both components of instrumental genesis processes are the subject’s doing.
Instrumentalization through assignment of a function to the artifact is the result
of his activity, as is the adaptation of his schemes. What distinguishes them is
the orientation of this activity. In instrumentation it is turned towards the subject

himself, whereas in instrumentalization it is oriented towards the artifact component
of the instrument. Both components of instrumental geneses contribute jointly to
the emergence and evolution of instruments, although, depending on the situations,
one may be more developed, predominant or even implemented on its own.
5. Designing
The previous sections indicated that the instrument must be understood as a com-
posite entity consisting of both the ‘artifact’ in terms of structure and form and
utilization schemes. It is their association, organized as a system, which makes up

the instrument. It was then shown that the user in his activity grants the artifact
the status of instrument. Even though one may be more developed than the other,
instrumentation and instrumentalization processes contribute jointly to the instru-
mental geneses through which the users ‘continue design in usage’. This last section
will examine the impact of these instrumental geneses on the design of instruments
intended to be used as a means of activity.
In the ‘Kittle House manifesto’, Caroll (1991) points out that the nature of the
contribution that may be achieved in the course of design depends largely on the
understanding of the available design process. Indeed, the author considers that
the ‘Human factors evaluation paradigm’ of the 1970s and the ‘Analytic design
models’ of the 1980s under-estimated the complexity of design processes. This diag-
nosis is shared. It is necessary to better understand design. This will be the objective
of the first part of this chapter. It is believed that usage must be thought of as an
intrinsic part of the design process and, therefore, that design is a process distributed
between ‘designers’ and ‘users’. The second part will propose new forms of design
organization.
5.1. Understanding the design process: taking usage into account

The fact that users do not use the system as might be expected and modify it
momentarily or durably has of course been pointed out by many authors. These
processes are the object of various interpretations which can be divided into three
main categories. Although these different interpretations are often considered as
rival theories, it is believed that instrumental geneses have several origins.
5.1.1. Insufficiently elaborated design. In one interpretation, a momentary or

durable transformation of artifacts by users is considered to reveal the inadequate
nature of the artifact’s design. Mackay (1988), for instance, looks at a software
program called ‘information lens’, initially designed as an intelligent agent or
an automatic secretary that screens electronic messages (Malone et al. 1986). She
shows that its users are not necessarily satisfied with the functions provided by
the device: they want to be informed of the arrival of messages and want to be able
to consult them. Therefore, users develop new functionality. For instance, they use
the system as a secretary that archives the messages in an appropriate zone, rather
than as a filter. One possible interpretation of the users’ modification of the artifact
(i.e. ‘instrumentalization’) is that it originates in an insufficiently elaborated design
which produces artifacts unsuited to users’ needs. Design continues in usage because
designers did not sufficiently consider users’ requirements or practices. Clearly, this
type of situation arises: user instrumentalization of artifacts aims at compensating
for the difficulties stemming from inadequate original design and the failure to
anticipate usage.
5.1.2. Design cannot anticipate the specificity of a situation. However, the ability
to anticipate usage is limited. A range of empirical and theoretical arguments leads
to thinking that full anticipation of the action is materially impossible. By showing
that there is an unbridgeable gap between an activity defined during design and an
activity actually carried out in situation, the French language school of ergonomics
demonstrated this point long ago. In real work, the operator encounters unforeseen
situations and oppositions linked to industrial variability (e.g. systematic deregula-

tion of tools, instability of the matter to be transformed, etc.) and to the fluctuation
of his own state (Daniellou 1992). This approach is in opposition with scientific work
management, which puts forward the hypothesis of a stabilized working environ-
ment and a stable individual in good condition (Wisner and Marcellin 1976). Work
and people fluctuate in time and these fluctuations must be taken into account in
the performance of the action. Suchman (1987) used the term ‘situated action’ to
generalize this aspect. Whatever the effort put into planning, performance of the
action cannot be the mere execution of a plan fully anticipating the action. One must
adjust to the circumstances and address situation contingencies, for instance, by
acting at the right time and by seizing favourable opportunities. Nevertheless,
saying that anticipation does not allow one to specify ‘local interactions’ does not
mean that a plan is useless. It guides and helps to find the best positioning. This
situated approach of the action leads to ‘design for unanticipated use’ (Robinson
1993), where anticipation is a resource rather than a dictate. This proposition is
shared by Vincente (1999), who thinks it is impossible to anticipate everything and
that one must, therefore, leave ‘workers the possibility to finish the design’.
5.1.3. Constructive activity as a source of instrumental geneses. These two initial

approaches identify two sources of design in usage.14 In the first case, it comes from
designers’ inadequate anticipation and problematic design. In the second case, design
in usage depends on a limit intrinsic to the design process: owing to situational
contingencies, full anticipation of the action is impossible. However, in both
approaches, design in usage is considered as rising from causes extrinsic to the
activity: the design process itself or ontological situation characteristics. It is believed
that instrumental geneses also have origins intrinsic to the subjects’ activity, which
must be sought in the development of the activity and constructive activities.
The situated nature of activity does not only come from the dynamic variability
of circumstances, as postulated by the proponents of situated action. It is also due
to the fact that situations contain invariants, which differentiate one action from
another. Users build classes of situations and specific instruments adapted to the
characteristics of each ‘class of situations’ based on these invariants.
The starting scheme seen in the previous section corresponds exactly to a class
of situation: starting a vehicle. There are other classes of situations. Driving up or
down a hill, turning, driving on a straight wide road or a narrow winding road,
are all classes of situations sharing sufficiently similar characteristics to give rise to
stable behaviour schemes assimilating the specificities of each particular situation.
Even when the activity is flexibly adapted to the variability of each situation,
the instrument, once constituted, can be mobilized for the range of situations in that
class, since it corresponds to the situational invariants of that class.
The invariant nature of situations comes in part from the activity of the designers
who more or less ‘decontextualize’. Simon (1991) showed the generic nature of this
strategy: a solar dial is useless on a boat because it is too dependent on the swell.
A mechanical watch, however, is independent from the environment and presents
no problem. It is no different for ‘socio-technical’ systems. Situational contingencies
are significantly greater for a bus driver than for a subway driver. The feasibility of
driverless subway trains has confirmed this fact in recent years. A bus driver, how-
ever, is confronted with another reality and a driverless bus is not a likely prospect in
the near future. A subway driver’s activity is more ‘confined’ than that of bus driver
(Hatchuel 1996). Vincente (1999) also stresses this point: designers’ anticipations
consist in ‘specifying boundaries on action’. The situational invariants of situation
classes are, therefore, in part the result of the designers’ work, but they are also built
by the subjects. Thus, driving a vehicle as a job is different than private driving, even
if the same road network is used.
In x 2.4, a distinction was proposed between two dimensions of the activity:
productive and constructive. In constructive activity, individuals develop their
resources and namely their instruments, in order to master a growing number of
situations and better handle their specificities. Instrumental geneses are made pos-
sible by the existence of invariants, but they do not originate in them. The origin of
instrumental geneses is to be found in the constructive activity itself. Confronted
with a new gearbox, the truck driver’s constructive activity continues beyond the
initial phase of constituting instrument-mediated activity schemes that lead to
adequate mastery for autonomous driving. It aims at an increasingly precise mastery
of the vehicle in a growing number of situation classes, where specificities are
progressively better handled by the subject. This development, resulting from
constructive activity, concerns instruments as well as the subject’s resources as a
whole (namely his conceptualizations and representations). It also concerns objects
and activity criteria: a bus driver, for instance, can become increasingly aware of
passenger comfort.
Instrumental geneses can, therefore, have several origins. An insufficiently
elaborated initial design is a source that can be reduced by improving the design
process. The variability of situations, which cannot be fully anticipated, sets an
intrinsic limit for design processes. This must nevertheless be taken into account,
for instance by managing the boundaries of the space of functional actions pos-
sibilities, as proposed by Vicente. These two sources are external to the subject.
The third source is of another nature since it is intrinsic to the constructive activity.
It comes from the subject himself. At this level, design in usage appears as an
ontological characteristic of design processes, testifying to the users’ constructive
activity.
5.2. Designing: A distributed and mutual learning process

The consequences of the plurality of origins of instrumental geneses on the design
process will now be examined. The main point is that users contribute to the
design process on grounds and with motivations and orientations of their own,
different from those of institutional designers. It is believed that it is essential
for the development of ergonomics in design processes to consider the design of
instruments as a process distributed between designers and users: both designers

and users contribute to design based on their diversity (Beguin and Rabardel
2000, Rabardel 2001, Folcher 2003).
When talking about distributed design, a path was followed similar to that of
Cicourel (1994) or Hutchins (1995) in the field of cognition. Cicourel stresses
that ‘social cognition’ attempts to highlight the fact that individuals who work in
co-operation are likely to have differences and must initiate a ‘dialogue’ to pool their
sources. Hutchins (1995) states that the social organization of cognitive activity is
more important than individual cognition when attempting to explain performance
in many fields. It is believed that the articulation between distributed productions
is currently insufficient in design and that new forms of co-operation are liable to
increase the efficacy of design processes. This is why one of the strategic dimensions
of design is based on the organization of distributed productions and the articulation
of the activities of the various ‘actors’ involved in the design process.
Nevertheless, ‘distributed cognition’ suggests that to account for the variety
of human performances one must focus on groups rather than individuals. It is
thought that the various distributed design actors must co-operate, but that the
models used to account for this distribution must not lead to blending the subject
into the ‘collective’. To preserve the specificity of individual activities, apprehending
the distribution of activities is favoured during the design process as a learning
process between user and designer, in agreement with other authors (Bjerknes and
Bratteteig 1987, Bødker et al. 1987). The point insisted on here is that in such a
model it is considered that each designer, in the course of his activity and in
the framework of his own objectives, undergoes learning processes which are not
definitive. That which is learned will be implemented in other people’s activity. The
initial result will be taken as object and reworked, which will lead to new learning
(Béguin 2003). Learning carried out within such a process contributes to the chang-
ing dynamic of the object being designed. This approach suggests that instrumental
geneses must not only be perceived as an ontological dimension of the activity, but
also as a resource for design.
This point of view is very different from the traditional engineering approach,
where design is perceived as a change of state during which a problem must be
resolved. Relations between actors and more specifically the organization of distrib-
uted activities are as strategic as the problem to be solved. Design seems to be
without any real beginning or end: it is more a cyclical process, where the result
of one person’s activity constitutes a source for the activity of another.
5.3. Organizing the design process

This understanding of design opens several paths for organizing the design process.
Three of them will be examined, which are located in different time zones.
. One path consists of ensuring that the result of the user’s activity will become
a source for the designer’s activity. The designer must be able to apprehend
the subject’s (or subjects’) constructions already available in the situations: social
utilization schemes, instrumentalized artifacts and constituted instruments.
Here, the user’s activity comes first chronologically.
. A second path consists of ensuring that the result of the designer’s activity will
become a source for the user’s constructive activity. The user must be provided
with artifacts that will allow or facilitate instrumental geneses and constructive
activities. In this case, it is the designer’s activity which comes first chronolo-
gically.
. Finally, a third path consists of designing around instrumental geneses and
organizing alternations between the designer’s activity and the user’s activity
during the design process. Here, both the designer’s and the user’s activities are
partly synchronous.
This study will now explore each of these paths in the same order as above.
5.3.1. From ‘unanticipated use’ to ‘instrument based design’. The first path consists
of basing the design process on already constituted instruments, social schemes and
instrumentalized artifacts.
To illustrate this proposition, two examples will be taken in the domain of
CAD systems used by draftsmen and designers working in industrial engineering.
The first example proposes basing the design process on social schemes. The second
on artifacts instrumentalized by users.
5.3.1.1. Designing around social schemes. An analysis of the design activity enabled
one to identify a ‘design scheme’ shared among designers of electrical
cabinets (Béguin 1997, Béguin and Rabardel 2000). The scheme organizes the
design process of the electrical cabinet components in micro-cycles of 1 min.
Each micro-cycle consists of two distinct phases. During the first phase of the
micro-cycle, the designer becomes familiar with the initial specifications and trans-
lates them into graphic form. During the second phase of the micro-cycle, the
designer assesses his production by mentally simulating the functioning of the
electrical system component he has just designed and drafted. This simulation
revealed some dysfunctions which lead the designer to make certain modifications.
One was able to show that some CAD software programs, which do not allow the
scheme to be applied, made it very difficult and sometimes impossible to carry out
the design activity. However, above all, one was able to propose design principles
based on this scheme to lay the foundations of a CAD software which would actually
support designers’ activity by facilitating the application of the scheme in the assess-
ment phase. Creating functions generating the different functioning states of the
system drafted on the screen were proposed, allowing the simulation of electrical
flows and facilitating the identification of dysfunctions.
5.3.1.2. Drawing inspiration from instrumentalized artefacts. The first example illus-
trates the possibility of designing around social schemes. The second example pro-
poses drawing inspiration from artifacts instrumentalized by users. It also concerns
work with CAD in the same industrial engineering company, but this time in the
design sector of piping networks. The instrumentalization processes of graphic
tablets were observed. Analysis of the constituted functions is rich in information.
Modifications of the tablet aimed at making the software take on, via CAD software,
the file organization (each file consisting of several thousands of entities classified
over some hundred layers). The principles for classifying the entities defined by the
users enabled them to obtain two distinct modes of display and use of colour on
the screen.
The first display mode relied on technical criteria: all the entities of a same
functional class were given the same colour on the screen. For example, all entities
representing pipes which convey hot water were displayed in red, whereas entities
representing cold water piping were displayed in blue. This first display mode, called
‘working mode’ by the operators, compensates for a loss of context linked to screen
size. Indeed, in industrial engineering, drafts are in AO format, which is almost 16
times larger than the graphic space provided by the screen. Play on colours partially
compensates for this problem: in this example, it is no longer necessary to see where
the piping comes from or where it goes to know whether it conveys hot or cold water.
The second display mode, which operators called ‘printing mode’, corresponded
to another function. The colour no longer referred to the technical system as above,
but to certain properties of the company’s printing chain. For instance, a particular
colour was represented by a particular thickness of printed line. This second display
mode allowed precise adjustments of the graphic image when a draft is turned into
a clean copy for the client.
The importance of instrumentalized artifacts analysis does not lie in coming up
with ready-made solutions, which could be implemented blindly, but in highlighting
the existence of difficulties and new needs by identifying the constituted functions.
In this case, the first display mode indicated the difficulty faced by users because
of screens that are too small to allow legible display of the whole draft. Software
solutions, similar to those developed by users, can therefore be considered. However,
material solutions, such as overhead projection on a white screen, could also be
envisaged. As for the second display mode, it revealed the need for more efficient
printing device adjustment tools than those available to users.
5.3.2. From the development of an artifact to an artifact for instrumental

genesis. This second organization path for distributing actions between designers
and users consists in designing artifacts that allow or facilitate instrumental geneses
and constructive activities. Thus, the designers’ task is to develop an ‘instrumental
proposition’ in the form of artifacts, anticipated operating modes and constituent
functions, taken up by the users (completely, partly or not at all) to develop instru-
ments and constituted functions.
The design of adaptable or modifiable artifacts constitutes a means for facilitat-
ing instrumental geneses based on designers’ propositions. One of the advantages
of the LENS system for sorting electronic mail, mentioned earlier, is that it allows
each operator to constitute his own filter depending on his own information needs
(De Keyser 1988).
Instrumentalization of artifacts is a sufficiently regular and generalized type
of activity to have been taken into account more or less systematically in design
processes. Henderson and Kyng (1991), for instance, proposed defining levels in the
modifiability of systems:
. not modifiable,
. modifiable and adaptable within the limits and perspectives envisaged by the
designers, and
. transformable within new perspectives in terms of functions.
The two last levels concern instrumentalization processes identified by the authors
in real situations. One refers to adaptation to the user in a ‘space’ foreseen by the
designer, the other to the emergence of new functions for and by the user. Different
types of user practices correspond to them:
. the choice between options pre-defined during initial designing; and
. the construction of new artifact behaviours based on existing elements. The
organization of existing elements must be modified by regrouping operations,
reconfiguration, etc.
The previous examples were about how to facilitate instrumentalization. However,
the importance of adaptable artifacts also comes from the fact that, in some cases, it
is also possible to have the artifact take on part of the action organization carried by
schemes. Thus, it is observed that designers on CAD created software scripts dealing
with tasks that previously relied on their schemes (Rabardel and Béguin 1995).
In another domain, that of spreadsheets, the constitution of complex functions
(macro-controls) allowing elementary functions to be combined into a single more
powerful one is based on the same principle: it consists in delegating part of the
user’s actions to the artifact.
5.3.3. From ‘finish the design’ to ‘design around instrumental genesis’. The third
path consists of introducing instrumental geneses into the design process in order
to ensure designers’ creations are in tune with those of users. What is specific to this
third option is that a co-design is organized, where designers’ and users’ activities are
partly synchronous, even dialogical, as will be seen in an example which refers to the
designing of a safety alarm meant to warn of reaction overspeed in chemical sites
(Béguin 2003). This study has already briefly mentioned this situation in the section
dedicated to tailoring. It will now be examined in greater depth.
The project was initiated by safety specialists of installations15 following reaction
overspeed events with a loss of life. The objective was to develop a safety instru-
mented system16 that would indicate the Mean Remaining Time before explosion
(MRT). The design principles relied on the evolution of the product’s temperature
and more specifically on the highest thresholds where reaction overspeed may occur.
An algorithm for detecting the critical time of reaction overspeed (i.e. explosion) was
developed and tested in an experimental situation (‘large scale test’). A prototype
of the device (version 1) was then introduced on a pilot site during 8 months.
Version 1 of the alarm displayed the (i) Mean Remaining Time before explosion
and (ii) provided highly precise information on the product’s temperature (within a
hundredth of a degree).
When version 1 of the alarm was introduced on the site, operators instrumenta-
lized it: they used it essentially as a precision thermometer for process operation and
very little in its ‘constituent function’ as an alarm. This instrumentalization process,
via production of a ‘constituted function’, is linked to the operators’ operating
strategy. They operate the process by maintaining it at the lowest possible tempera-
ture threshold. It is a strategy which keeps the major risk of reaction overspeed at
bay but it has its own risk: if the product cools down too much, it might ‘crystallize’
and become solid, this overcooling is considered a serious incident.
Because the information on temperature provided by the thermometer of version
1 was much more accurate than that provided by the other thermometers available
on the site, version 1 of the alarm ended up being transformed by the operators into
a tool enabling them to operate as close as possible to the crystallization threshold.
The result of the designers’ work (version 1 of the alarm) was taken as an object by
the users who gave it another function as an operating aid. This result of the users’
activity (instrumentalized version 1) served in turn as a source for a new development
by the designers.
In version 2, in addition to the instantaneous display of temperature, they added
a display of the historical record of the change in temperature. This historical record
allows interpretation in terms of ‘trend’ of the product’s thermal kinetics, which
constitutes a variable used by the operators in their activity of preventing crys-
tallization. Designers relied on the ‘constituted function’ created by operators to
produce the new ‘constituent function’ of version 2.
However, the story does not end here. Users’ constructive activity did not only
lead designers to work on a new version of the alarm, but in a deeper way also
resulted in a re-orientation of the project. Although designers modified the artifact

in line with users’ constructive activity, they were not satisfied with version 2.
Norm NE 31 (Namur 1995) recommends dissociating safety instrumented systems
from other means of action and the system had now become an operating aid.
Furthermore, although the device allowed the prevention of crystallization, what
had become of its role with respect to the major risk of overspeed which was the
project’s main objective? Activity analyses carried out simultaneously by ergono-
mists revealed that the operators had practically no knowledge of reaction overspeed
due to a rise in temperature and had practically no opportunity to develop contin-
gencies given their strategy of operating at the lowest possible temperature. Based on
this diagnosis, a new version of the alarm was developed (version 3). The device,
whose functioning was based on a model of reaction overspeed, was modified to
carry out simulations during which the operators were able to experiment conditions
for recovery of the process in emergency situations.
One sees, therefore, that while designers initially learn from users through the
implementation of the artifact in the operating activity, in a second stage, users
learn from designers the actual conditions of reaction overspeed through experi-
mentation in action. It must be noted that the use in simulation of the latest
alarm prototype showed that in the event of reaction overspeed, operators would
meet with failure owing to the organizational and architectural conditions of the site.
This led to a fourth and final design cycle in which organizational and architectural
modifications were made. One more operator was hired and the control room was
modified.
This is, therefore, a dialogical process, during which the result of one party’s
work is taken up and re-worked in the other party’s activity and where a prototype
constitutes a mutual learning vector between designers and users. These learning
processes contribute to defining the nature of the problems to be solved and influence
the validation of the design hypotheses. The process, thus, deeply modified not
only the characteristics, but also the status of the artifact being designed. In the
operator’s activity, the alarm, the initial constituent function of the artifact
(version 1), received the constituted function of operating aid. This function was
re-worked by designers who implemented it as a constituent function of version 2.
However, the insufficiently elaborated nature of this second version generated the
implementation of a third version via the addition of a new simulation constituent
function. The constituent function of the artifact was, therefore, very different since
this time it was a tool geared towards the operators, with an almost didactic and
reflexive finality.
6. Conclusion
This article has presented the instrument-mediated activity approach, which puts
forward a ‘generative model’ of instrument design in the perspective of human
activities. It has shown the consequences on the understanding and organiza-
tion of the design process. This approach clearly throws up new questions. This
conclusion will only look at one concerning the activity of ergonomists. What is
the ergonomist’s role once the main issue in design lies in an articulation between the
distributed productions of designers and users?
First, it seems that instituting distributed design requires preliminary work so as
to create the social and cognitive conditions that foster such a process. Designers
may spontaneously seek to take usage and, more generally, activity into considera-
tion. However, the manner in which they do so may be insufficient. Piaget’s research,
on which the concept of the scheme used is based, postulates the very powerful thesis
that action is autonomous knowledge. It exists ‘underlying conceptualization
for action’ (Vergnaud 1996) or ‘incorporated knowledge’, and is difficult to verbalize
(Leplat 2000). Thus, a crane driver manipulating a three-ton weight at the end of a
20-m long pole clearly knows how to mobilize the balancing of masses and distances
in action but probably can’t explain it verbally.17 It is, thus, not easy to access the
cognitive components of usage, even for the user him/herself. Furthermore, there
are social considerations in the participation of users into design. Making the
work activity readable is a relatively ambivalent process that may facilitate worker
participation in task definition. However, it can also undermine them: instrumental
geneses can be interpreted as a dispensation from orders or a breaking of rules. So,
it is fairly clear that a distributed organization of design must correspond to specific
methods and concepts. This approach moves from the idea of spreading the design
result to that of apprenticeship and confrontation of different forms of knowledge,
constructed based on different points of view. Yet, the whole point is to construct
references shared by users and designers, in order to conceptually organize reality
and orient action during the design process. It is in following this line of reasoning
that the significance of the notion of ‘common worlds’ has been presented elsewhere
(Béguin 2004). The notion of ‘world’ is most often used to describe the social and
cognitive ‘figure’ of a given specialist (the methods engineer, for example)
(Bucciarelli 1994). This approach is interesting in so far as it shows that designers’
conceptual, axiological or praxical implicits form a system with the object they
specify or develop. However, above all, different worlds are possible and acceptable
for apprehending a given situation (Goodman 1978). In the example of the alarm
used above, the operators mobilized a ‘cold world’, made up of cooling systems,
‘beginnings of crystallization’ and ‘crystals’. This was a world constructed for action
in this process, but the reference was ‘crystallization’. This ‘cold world’ is very
different from engineers’ ‘hot world’: a gaseous and explosive world, apprehended
via studies in vitro, followed by very precise observations filled with calculations and
formulae. This world is also constructed for action, but the reference is explosion.
Yet, it was not possible to settle for a standoff between these different worldviews.
On the contrary, it was important to adjust these heterogeneous views to reach a
common world, to be constructed to make a common work. How is the field of these
references created? What are the methods and tools that facilitate its construction?
This is the task today.
Beyond ergonomists themselves and the contributions they can make in specific
projects, it is felt that ergonomics, a field whose inter-disciplinary nature has
often been highlighted, must play a central role in proposing methods liable to facil-
itate mutual interactions and produce concepts that could be shared by the different
design actors. The analysis unit ‘instrument-mediated activity’ seems to be precisely
one of the concepts that can be shared by the different actors in the design process.
Notes
1. Other authors make similar choices. For example, Kaptelinin (1996) proposes
‘Computer Mediated Activity’ for the computer field.

2. Since a previous version of the principles (Rabardel 2001, Rabardel and Waern
2003), a new principle has been evolved and identified: inventiveness.
3. The system view apprehends the subject/artifact/task system as a whole and
assesses it at the level of global performance, whereas the technocentred view
consists of looking at people through the requirements of the artifacts.
4. Here, the term appropriation refers simultaneously to both aspects defined by
Wertsch (1997): appropriation (as in to make one’s own) and know-how. The
distinction he introduced, following Bakhtin, seems to be perfectly relevant, but
too specific to be taken on the level of a general principle.
5. One will see the criticism Suchman (1987) addresses, in this framework, to
computational cognitive psychology.
6. Defining an action as situated usually means that the organization of the action
must be conceived as a system emerging in situ from the dynamics of inter-
actions. In this context, the term situated can assume two meanings which
refer to the nature of the interactions: the first one, close to ethnomethods,
concerns the activity of speech, where the action is situated since it is oriented
and dependent on the recipient’’s action (Suchman 1987). The second one, closer
to cognitive anthropology, concerns interactions with environmental resources
and informational supports.
7. The axiological dimensions of the action are relative to the values and norms
underlying the action.
8. Zinchenko (1996) strongly argues for the importance of connections between
activity theories and Piagetian approaches (see also Rabardel and Samurçay
2001).
9. Many authors, drawing inspiration from different theoretical frameworks, have
worked on the concept of scheme. This is not the place to retrace its historical
background; the curious reader will find it summarized in Rabardel (2002).
Here, one will keep to the elementary definitions of the Piaget school.
10. The relative nature of distinctions is very general in conceptualizations which
refer to action. This is the case, for instance, of distinctions between action and
operation in Leont’ev’s (1976) approach.
11. This is often true of situations which numerous authors (Bodker 1989) call
‘breakdown situations’; situations where automated functioning, for various
reasons, can no longer occur and where the subject consciously takes over.
12. Therefore, readers should not be surprised to hear the waiter shout in a
Parisian café ‘a Paris butter for two’. The translation in non-operative language
being: prepare a Paris ham and butter sandwich for table number 2.
13. Observation was carried out over 5 days, but it is possible that the instrumental
genesis process continued beyond that.
14. See also Folcher (1998, 2003).
15. Reaction overspeed is an exothermal phenomenon which constitutes one of the
main factors of death in chemical sites classified SEVESO.
16. Norm NE 31 (Namur 1995) distinguishes between three classes of process opera-
tion devices depending on the seriousness of events with respect to risk: control
systems, which are aids to operation, monitoring systems, used when an event is
detected, and safety instrumented systems, which are specifically dedicated to
degraded situations.
17. The opposite is true. A PhD in physics who is learning to swim will not necess-
arily accept that his body floats, even if it means bringing into doubt
Archimedes’ theorem!
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This article was downloaded by: [The University of British Columbia]

On: 09 December 2014, At: 13:13

Theoretical Issues in Ergonomics

Instrument mediated activity:

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14639220500078179

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Instrument mediated activity: from subject development

P. RABARDEL*y and P. BEGUINz

y2 rue de la Liberté, Université paris 8, UFR 7, 93200 Saint Denis, France

The aim of this article is to present the ‘instrument-mediated activity’ approach,

to the epistemological unity of generative models is put forward as well as a

Keywords: Activity theory; Instrument; Creativity; Design in use; Scheme;

This article seeks to contribute to the development of a perspective on human

*Corresponding author. Email: rabardel@univ-paris8.fr

Theoretical Issues in Ergonomics Science

The development of a perspective on human activity and a new generation of models

2.1. Fostering intrinsic approaches to activity

ing an intrinsic approach to the subject’s instruments as a psychological and social

2.3. The mediator instrument

allows the transformation of an object in order to reach a goal. Indeed, relations

2.4. A developmental process of instrument appropriation

users. The introduction of an artifact in a given situation allows old problems to be

2.5. The situated instrument, both social and cultural

circumstances because it is considered that the organization of the action relies on

(namely the repair mechanisms or indexicalization).

3. Shaping of the activity by artifacts

3.1. Constraints intrinsic to the artifact

3.1.1. Multi-modality of shaping by artifacts. Diﬀerent types of constraints intrinsic

a diﬀerentiating dimension of the action and activity shaping modalities in

3.2. Another source of shaping: Utilization schemes

environment and is generalized according to the situations it is applied to.

elementary schemes. Their distinctive feature is that they are orientated

3.3. The instrument, a mixed entity

One now has the necessary foundations to propose a psychological deﬁnition of

4. Tailoring and instrumental genesis

The reorganization and restructuring of instrument-linked activity follows two

Catachreses are commonly interpreted in terms of misappropriation of an artifact

4.1. Instrumental genesis

constituted temporarily: the wrench only momentarily acquires the function of a

representation that is a language, in order to adapt it to the speciﬁcity of their

The new instrument-mediated activity scheme, symbolized by (D>N>R) þ(D>As/

the orientation of this activity. In instrumentation it is turned towards the subject

utilization schemes. It is their association, organized as a system, which makes up

5.1. Understanding the design process: taking usage into account

5.1.1. Insuﬃciently elaborated design. In one interpretation, a momentary or

situations and oppositions linked to industrial variability (e.g. systematic deregula-

5.1.3. Constructive activity as a source of instrumental geneses. These two initial

5.2. Designing: A distributed and mutual learning process

instruments as a process distributed between designers and users: both designers

5.3. Organizing the design process

5.3.2. From the development of an artifact to an artifact for instrumental

resulted in a re-orientation of the project. Although designers modiﬁed the artifact

‘Computer Mediated Activity’ for the computer ﬁeld.

Ragazzini, I., 1992, Modalités du diagnostic en échographie médicale. Unpublished master,

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