2021/08/23 by Karen Sowon, Sowon, Karen, Wallace Chigona +1
Business, Management and Accounting · Computer Science · Social Sciences · #Computers and Society (cs.CY) #E-Government and Public Services #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Information Systems Theories and Implementation #Innovative Approaches in Technology and Social Development #cs.CY
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2108.10082
In proceedings of the 1st Virtual Conference on Implications of Information and Digital Technologies for Development, 2021
arxiv created 2021/08/23 · openalex publication_date 2021/08/23 · arxiv updated 2021/08/24 · openalex created_date 2021/08/30 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The purpose of this paper is to engage with the Information Systems' contexts of use as a means to explain nuanced human-technology interaction. In this paper, we specifically propose the conceptualisation of healthcare-seeking as an activity to offer a richer explanation of technology utilisation. This is an interpretivist study drawing on Activity Theory to conceptualise healthcare-seeking as the minimum context needed to explicate use. A framework of the core aspects of AT is used to analyse one empirical mHealth case from a Kenyan context thus illustrating how AT can be applied to study technology use. The paper explicates technology use by explaining various utilisation behaviour that may emerge in a complex human-technology interaction context; ranging from a complex adoption process to mechanisms to determine continuance that differentiate trust in the intervention from trust in the information, and potential technology coping strategies. The paper is a novel attempt to operationalise AT to study technology use. It thus offers a broader explication of use while providing insights for design and implementation made possible by the conceptualisation of healthcare-seeking as an activity. Such insights may be useful in the design of patient-centred systems.