Editing Situated cognition (section)

=== Planning vs. action ===
Suchman's book, ''Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-machine Communication'' (1987), provided a novel approach to the study of [[Human–computer interaction|human-computer interaction (HCI)]]. By adopting an anthropological approach to sensemaking and interpretation, Suchman was able to demonstrate how both action and planning were situated in the context of a flow of socially- and materially-mediated activities - an idea that stimulated many of the later conceptualizations of situated cognition. Her studies contrasted the deterministic approach to planning assumed by technology designers with the situated nature of planning as people make sense of the status of their workflow and adjust their course of action accordingly. For example, a photocopier will instruct its user to reload all pages in the original order after a jam, whereas the user understands that they only need to copy the last page again.  By arguing that plans were the result of ongoing processes of prospective/retrospective sense making, Suchman identified the limits of technology system access to relevant social and material resources as a major cause of limitations in how technology supports human work.<ref name=":1" />

This position led to a major debate with Vera and Simon (1993), who argued that cognition is based on symbolic representations and that planning must therefore be deterministic, based on a pre-determined repertoire of learned response. Most organizational theorists would now see this debate as reflecting individual/cognitive vs. socially-situated levels of analysis (requiring a similar need for paradigmatic co-existence as [[Wave–particle duality]]). Suchman (1993) argues that planning in the context of work-activity is similar to navigating a canoe through rapids: you know what point on the river you are aiming for, but you constantly adjust your course as you interact with rocks, swells, and currents on the way. As a result, many organizational theorists argue that plans can only be viewed as post-hoc justifications of action, while Suchman herself appears to view plans and actions as interrelated in the moment of action.<ref name=":2" />