An Ontology for Contextual Information System Design.
Collaborative teamwork is becoming more common in several domains including healthcare and disaster management. While collaborative teamwork can benefit from information system (IS) support, designing IS models to support collaboration is a significant challenge owing to the variations in tasks and people that must be supported, and the different contexts within which collaboration takes place. Collaborative teamwork can vary greatly because of context, which is the integration of diverse, dynamic, and heterogeneous needs for groups to achieve a specific goal. However in the literature there has been limited emphasis on how contextual underpinnings can be incorporated into IS design. This paper uses a case study of the design of a user-driven prototype disaster management IS. We used the think aloud method to capture participant thoughts while interacting with the IS prototype. The think aloud data was analyzed and used to develop an ontology of contextual considerations to support IS design.
