Beyond the interface: Co-evolution inside Interactive Systems – A proposal founded on Activity Theory

Task oriented and object oriented traditional interactive system design methods show more and more shortcomings in the light of recent evolutions. These evolutions are both external (organisational) and internal (technological) to the developed systems. The two main problems of traditional methods are their linearity and rigidity. Once a system has been introduced, it can only evolve through maintenance. These methods follow several steps segmenting time, actors, and work to be realised. Taking results from the human sciences, and particularly from Activity Theory, we show how we have defined the co-evolution concept as a solution for the above-mentioned problems. We also present the DARE system that we have developed for supporting this concept.