In this article, we present WOAD, a framework that was inspired and partly validated within a 2-year observational case study at a major teaching hospital. We present the WOAD framework by stating its main and motivating rationales, outlining its high-level architecture and then introducing its denotational language, LWOAD. We propose LWOAD to support users of an electronic document system in declaratively expressing, specifying and implementing content- and event-based mechanisms that fulfill coordinative requirements and make users aware of relevant conditions. Our focus addresses (a) the user-friendly and yet formal expression of local coordinative practices based on the work context; (b) the promotion of awareness of both these conventions and the context to enable actors to quickly respond; (c) the full deployment of coordination-oriented and context-aware functionalities into legacy electronic document systems. We give examples of LWOAD mechanisms taken from the case study and discuss their impact from the EUD perspective.