Glossary » situated action
situated action
the notion that people’s behavior is contextualized, i.e. the situation is a very important factor in determining what people will do. In the extreme view, this is the idea that you can’t generalize and predict people’s behavior from one situation to the next. Thus, this suggests an approach to usability which says to understand each user’s or, more commonly, each organization’s specific and detailed needs in designing software for them by carefully examining how they work and how situational and organizational factors fit into that process.
