Designerly Activity Theory: toward a new ontology for design research
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This paper is based on empirical data obtained from two case studies whereby collaborative design of teams composed of four recent graduates with different backgrounds were studied. In both cases, the collected data is related to the interactions of team members toward the development of a design solution in response to a brief. Although the study of the collaborative design process is an essential part of this work, the focus of the paper is on the potential of an expanded Activity Theory as a methodological framework that allows detailed analysis of collaboration. A five-step data processing approach contributed to the emergence of a new theoretical model. The model, an expanded version of Activity Theory, takes into account creative and contextual processes of collaborative design, allowing for thorough data analysis and the production of systemic interpretation of design activity in context. Titled Designerly Activity Theory, we present our reasoning and supporting references as the contribution of this paper having potential to offer a situated framework for the ontology of design research.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.034 | 0.024 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.009 | 0.006 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.042 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.018 | 0.026 |
| Open science | 0.005 | 0.008 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.007 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".