Design for loosely-coupled mobile groups

This paper tracks the implementation of a custom application to support mobile health care workers using ethnographic and interview methods. It is rare to see a paper that actually looks at how a new technology is adopted and then compares that real-world feedback with the expected usage scenarios and requirements set during the original design. The target users of this application are mobile, but have cars and mobile phones and hence are able to work via laptops. How this design team chose to create their application to support asynchronous mobile workers is very good guidance for those of us creating similar applications.

The definition of a 'loosely-coupled mobile group' they give is:
where workers are not strictly dependent on synchrony and up-to-date information from other group members

"The results of our study show that four loosely-coupled group characteristics are particularly significant to mobile system design: autonomy and the partitioning of work, clear ownership of data and artifacts, asynchronous awareness, and explicit asynchronous communication."

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