Formes et enjeux de l’analyse de l’activité pour la conception des systèmes de travail

From our perspective, to work as an ergonomist for the design of working systems, not only means to analyse the activity but also means to facilitate its inclusion in the design process through proposals which might result in changes in the monitoring of the project and in the design activities. In this article, we will argue that different ways can be chosen to think and define the status and the stakes of the analysis of workers’ activity for the design process. Our purpose is to start to clarify and classify these different ways from our own and probably limited perspective. Through literature review and our own experience, we identify three main positions: the ergonomist can try to anticipate the workers’ activity in their working situations. He (she) can support the design of flexible devices which direct (support and control) the action in situ. He (she) can try to catch and articulate in a same process the development of both the situation and the activity. These different positions result in different understanding of the design process mainly in its temporal dimension. They also result in different ways of building the social relations and the place of the ergonomist within the design project