A Language/Action Perspective on the Design of Cooperative Work

In creating computer-based systems, we work within a perspective that shapes the design questions that will be asked and the kinds of solutions that are sought. This article introduces a perspective based on language as action, and explores its consequences for system design. We describe a communication tool called The Coordinator, which was designed from a language/action perspective; and we suggest how further aspects of coordinated work might be addressed in a similar style. The language/action perspective is illustrated with an example based on studies of nursing work in a hospital ward and contrasted to other currently prominent perspectives.