"Drops hollowing the Stone". Workarounds as resources for better task-artifact fit.

Abstract

The paper reports on a systematic survey of the literature around the manifold theme of workarounds in CSCW and in so doing presents a range of definitions that focus on different aspects of this phenomenon. We also report a case study in a large hospital where we discussed with some key users the opportunity of a tool that could promote awareness of existing workarounds, as a way to provide feedback on the actual use of an IT application in a bottom-up fashion. This case study led to the design of a simple process annotation tool, where users could distinguish between different kinds of workarounds: either as misalignments with respect to the organization procedures, or circumventions of the technology supporting them, or both.