A Mobile Computer System to Support Collaborative Ethnography: An Approach to the Elicitation of Knowledge of Work Teams in Complex Environments

The paper presents a collaborative ethnography approach for knowledge elicitation of work teams in complex environments. It discusses the concepts of cognitive systems, distributed cognition, and presents a review of methods commonly used in the elicitation of knowledge both in the case of traditional and complex environments. Then, it points to some advantages of a collaborative approach in comparison to other non-collaborative approaches. An evaluation plan of the collaborative ethnography approach based on experimentation, and the development of a mobile system to support the proposed methodology is also presented. This system aims to stimulate collaboration and an organization in the ethnographic knowledge elicitation process.