Abstract

Collaborative Action Theory (CoAct) extends the notions of affordance and moves away from idiosyncratic, subjective mental models of the world to the notion that actors with similar capacities to act can potentially discern similar action possibilities in the world. It changes the direction from discovery and alignment of internal representations to mutual attunement of collaborators to build sufficient capacities, share informational structures, and calibrate selectivity to achieve shared affordances. CoAct has the potential to influence such diverse areas as user experience design, information overload, and group decision making. User-experience design is a critical element to developing computer-based applications that are essential for team action. Therefore, user-experience design is an important example of asynchronous work between designer and user to effect appropriate action at the appropriate time. This chapter reviews CoAct and provides a detailed exemplar of how CoAct can be used to achieve preciseness in user experience design.