Towards Supporting the Existing Workplace Practices of a Community of Brazilian Healthcare Professionals

With the increasing affordability of computers, displays and telecommunications, the scenario of introducing digital Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) into communities with little or no previous exposure to computing has become common place. Understanding how ICT affects the functioning of such communities is important for determining design and introduction strategies that can minimize the disruption of well established practices in said scenarios. We designed and introduced a ticketing system within a community of Brazilian healthcare professionals that have little or no previous exposure to computing. Visualizing individual people led to tasks directed towards particular individuals. Visualizing people interactions promoted open-ended and communal tasks. We observed that professionals circumvented the original design of the system to introduce unimplemented functionalities and support their well-established social-based information management practices.