“Whatever Works”

Abstract

This chapter addresses the general problem of how to design and deploy effective computational tools that support actors of an organization domain in making sense of the information these manage by means of those tools and technologies. To this aim, the chapter recognizes the complementary, but sometimes also diverging, approach of two related disciplines, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), and Information Systems (IS). Contributions from both these academic communities are put in a common perspective to discuss a comprehensive solution to the apparently incompatible requirements of different communities of users that use the same information for different purposes. The authors take the theme of quality information standards, requirements, and users’ expectations in information-intensive domains such as healthcare and hospital work as a paradigmatic case to discuss the characteristics of their proposal. This encompasses the conceptualization of a general-purpose architecture that they devised to support adequate exploitation by human actors of informative resources regarding how they perform their job and articulate their actions with others; and a specialized design-oriented construct, called Affording Mechanism (AM). An AM is a dyad composed by an artifact (i.e., the schema of a material information tool) and a dynamic relationship between the context of use and the artifact’s affordances. AM relationships are expressed in terms of computable if-then statements that modulate the affordances conveyed through and by the artifact to evoke a “positive” and knowledgeable reaction in the actors’ behavior. On the basis of observations performed in the hospital domain, the chapter discusses in a coherent constructivist light the role of artifacts and derives a set of general requirements for affording mechanisms that support situated behaviors.