The use of ergonomics techniques and JAD for the collective work definition in information systems

The users’ participation in the information system definitions since the beginning of its development is encouraged by most of the software development methodologies. There are specific techniques to obtain a consensual solution among the participants, as for instance, joint application development (JAD), motivating meetings among users, stakeholders and developers, being basically the target to understand what the system should accomplish. Other aspects concerning the users’ collective involvement are not considered, as for instance, the way that the future system could help in the task of participating in a common work. This fact happens because, in general, the user is seen independently of the environment or group in which he/she is inserted, with the individual model generalized for the collective behavior study involving all the users. This work proposes a model that uses ergonomics, cognition mental models and software engineering techniques to deal with the issues involving the workers’ collective work, under the information system point of view. Research-action will be used as the research method, applied during a corporate workflow system development in a Brazilian technological research compan