Technology for the humdrum: trajectories, interactional needs and a care setting

We report on a care setting where staff looking after ex-psychiatric hospital patients were supported by mobile and stationary communications technology (e.g. mobile phones and a messaging system) and physical artefacts (e.g. whiteboards and Post-It notes). Building on previous ethnographic investigations, we show that the notion of trajectory (or an ongoing course of action) was important for understanding staff's care work. We argue that sensitivity to this notion was helpful in identifying the key transitions, cycles, plans and management issues in staff's ongoing work. We present verified trajectory-informed scenarios emerging from fieldwork and show that these snapshots of work were useful for establishing current and future interactional needs among staff and residents. Finally we describe issues pertinent to new technology design emerging from these trajectory-informed scenarios and discuss the usefulness of the concept for informing socio-technical system design.