Steps for CHAT Activity System tool

 How can an activity system be a useful innovation tool?  How do I use it?

There will be lots of different ways to use this tool depending on your skills and experience.  I’m still a relative new to using it but do have a number of year’s experience in product and service improvement in general. I’ve found that I’ve been able to apply some of my existing knowledge and experience to the use of this tool.  Anyone else would need to make a similar self-assessment when deciding how to start.

In terms of my experience, I’ve read a number of CHAT studies and have read Yamagata Lynch (2007).  Over the last 3months I’ve also experimented with creating Activity Systems to describe systems that are part of my work environment.  I am also currently applying Activity Systems analysis in a large scale policy developed project by using the activity system question and diagram tools during the analysis phase of the project.  It’s helping to describe the relationship between the different aspects of the organizational systems that are relevant for the two policies I have been looking to develop.  This in turn is helping me to identify contradictions and tensions to inform the design of the new policy.

Here I will describe my current approach.

Firstly, Im conscious that need to carry out all the research project steps following the principles that underpin CHAT and complexity theory in general.  I’m conscious that as a qualitative researcher and innovator I am a tool myself.  So the quality of the work is dependent on my self-awareness and integrity. 

Whether I’ve been using CHAT Activity Systems for a big policy development project (mode 1) or informally (mode 2) the following steps still apply.  It’s just that I might do some parts from memory or what is immediately available (eg collecting data) rather than explicitly. 

A CHAT Activity System is an analysis tool so needs data to go into it.  So I’ve first collected my data, and potentially grouped it thematically, reviewed and triangulated it.  Once I have my data of a suitable quality then it’s time to use the activity system, to analyze it.

• First I choose a particular part of the overall system in question to describe as an activity system.  There are two key things to identify being scale & time. 
• Second, I use data insight’s I’ve collected to describe the different points of the activity system e.g. the Subject/s, Objective, Tools etc.  
• Then I review the system as I’ve described it to identify contradictions and tensions. There are different types of tensions.  These represent an additional layer of system level insights.  

Note: So far I have largely done this by myself and with some input from my project team manner, but I’m conscious that I could include other stakeholders in this process to gain wider perspective and triangulation. So I will do this when I think it’s appropriate and I can do it in an effective way.

So I now have a new layer of understanding about the issues in one activity system to inform design decisions. This will inform system improvement or the design of a new system so that it’s addressed the issues in a systemic way so it’s more likely to be successful - this is the innovation.

• With this new understanding I am ready to move to design modeling, or think about any other activity systems that would be good to analyze and then possibly compare with each other.