CHI '91 Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Information systems and organizational change
Communications of the ACM
A mathematical theory of communication
ACM SIGMOBILE Mobile Computing and Communications Review
Out of Sight, Out of Sync: Understanding Conflict in Distributed Teams
Organization Science
Approaching and leave-taking: Negotiating contact in computer-mediated communication
ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI)
Human-Computer Interaction
Claim mobile: engaging conflicting stakeholder requirements in healthcare in uganda
ICTD'09 Proceedings of the 3rd international conference on Information and communication technologies and development
The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
The Design of Everyday Things
Claim mobile: when to fail a technology
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Affordances in HCI: toward a mediated action perspective
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Experiences with bulk SMS for health financing in Uganda
CHI '12 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems
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When engaged in ICTD research, it is often simpler to focus efforts on a single specific technology, whether that entails computers for telecenters, mobile phones for data collection, or text messages for public health education. In practice, however, people and organizations use a variety of technologies together, smoothly interweaving them as they navigate their lives. In this paper we analyze the ways in which a health financing organization in Uganda integrates a variety of communications technologies together to achieve reliable communications with their partnering health facilities distributed throughout Southwest Uganda. Based on four years of participant observation, we describe two communication scenarios in this organization to illustrate braided communications at work. We find that stakeholders work together to develop and maintain effective relationships using many different communications channels together in parallel, a combined channel we describe as braided communications. Braided communications have three primary characteristics. Firstly, they use co-existing channels, employing each as best suits a given set of goals. Secondly, they are co-dependent, or co-reinforcing, with strengths of individual channels reinforcing weaknesses of other channels. Finally, they are co-evolving; as available technologies and the ways in which they are used change, the nature of the braided use changes as well.