Apropriação por meio de tailoring adaptável em sistemas colaborativos de comunicação: um estudo de caso Slack e o Whatsapp

Abstract

People appropriate technologies, at some time and to some degree, to make them more suitable to their needs. Technology appropriation is tied to assigning new meanings or making something of its own, and can be achieved in a variety of ways, from using paper and pen to programming new codes or rebuilding a digital artifact. Among these possibilities, there are functionalities within the computational systems that people can use to appropriate, an example of which is through end-user tailoring. This research seeks to investigate how people appropriate collaborative communication systems through end-user tailoring. As a basis for the understanding of context and its influence on appropriation, we adopt Science Technology and Society (STS) studies and the third wave of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). In the scope of this work two collaborative communication systems are studied, one directed to the personal context, WhatsApp, and another to the professional context, Slack. Through interviews and questionnaires, we sought to understand the context where people make use of such systems and to identify cases in which people appropriate through end-user tailoring. We used coding methods in the interviews transcription that helped in the identification of patterns and in the analysis of the data collected. We identifyied four cases where people performed end-user tailoring to appropriate the systems. In addition, this research provides an understanding of the context, motivations and circumstances in which people appropriate. From the analysis of the data, evidence was found that contextual factors motivate and condition the appropriation through end-user tailoring in communication systems.