Understanding mobile work in a distributed information space

Abstract

Moving beyond the focus on interactions at the desktop computer, this paper introduces a model providing conceptual tools to understand mobile work in distributed information spaces. The model serves to describe the fundamental interactive relationships between mobile and fixed people and artifacts physically distributed in a space. Our model emerges as a result of empirical ethnographic investigations of medical work conducted to ground the design of ubiquitous computing technology. The model is used here in the analysis of data collected during a detailed observation and shadowing of four medical workers. This analysis resulted on a set of design implications that we present here together with relevant findings about the nature of the kind of mobile work experienced at hospital medical settings. We argue that modeling and characterization efforts such as the one presented here are necessary to build the theoretical foundations required for the development of ubiquitous computing.