Socio-Technical Systems

Luca Sabatucci 29/05/2012 – SE Seminars – Palermo, Italy

The ACube Project

A monitoring system for nursing homes connected to the environment through a distributed sensor networks and actuators.

• Multidisciplinary nature:– software engineers, sociologists, analysts– end-users involved in the process

• Technology:– Operate in complex scenarios and to be able to recognize, analyze and support

complex physical and social processes.– Highly technological, autonomous and self-configurable.– Adaptation capabilities to fit different environments and users

• Non Functional Requirements:– Low Intrusiveness – Acceptance– Privacy

Func Req with Visual Scenarios

A demo is available at: http://acube.fbk.eu/it/node/106

Design Challenges• The core problem is not technological• No clear-cut separation from the “software” and the

“physical” world• Central role of People

– Identify real needs and integrate them into the design.– Users must easily push their preferences into the system

execution.• AmI and Society

– Law compliance: effects of existing laws and new laws trying to regulate this new reality

– Adaptability to the evolution of users’s needs and organization changes.

Walter Van de Velde. Ambient Intelligence and Beyond. European Commission DG Information Society and Media Future and Emerging Technologies

Socio-technical systems

• A socio-technical system is a system that exists to serve some organizational purpose. It includes:– Computer– Software– Business processes– Organizational rules and regulations– Human operators

• Examples:– A system to support admission and discharge of

hospital patients– A system to support purchasing in a company

SLIDE BY IAN SOMMERVILLEFitting software to the organisation. 2008

What STS is not

• Traditionally “technology” is perceived as some kind of monolithic entity hidden in the environment

• Technical people believe that– People will follow processes– Users are all the same– Design is about meeting requirements rather than

providing an efficient and effective system• In many projects, developers never meet or

observe the users of a system

STS - Premises• Socio-technical systems focus on the social

and technical together rather than consider technical issues in isolation.

• Design should take into account how social and technical factors influence the functionality and usage of STSs.

Key Features• Based on a pragmatic acceptance of the world as it is, populated by differing

and imperfect people

• Global Properties (that are not the sum of parts), e.g.: – acceptability, – familiarity, – trust

• Not deterministic

• Their success depends on the stability of human goals– Process evolution– Changes in working practices– Changes in the organization

Ian Sommerville

Gap between Social and Technical• Years of research have demonstrated the

importance of STS issues on the success or otherwise of large organizational systems

• This gap seems a major problem facing social software today (Ackerman, 2000).

• Value-centered computing counters this gap by rounding software more on social aspects (Preece, 2000).

Digital Products Need Better Design Methods

• Most digital products are built from an engineering point of view

• The result of these approaches is, unfortunately, software that irritates, reduces productivity, and fails to meet user needs.

• Software too frequently assumes that its user is computer-literate.

The user has failed again

Designing STS

• A new development process requires systematic approach to considering:– How STS issues affect the system requirement, use

and evolution– Understanding people in the context where they

live and work– Balance users' needs with business goals, social

values and technological capabilities – People should be involved in designing the

relationships between technology and work

DESIGN

TECHNOLOGY

USER STUDY

Fieldwork

• Systematic observation of work in the context where the work is performed

• The aim is to develop a rounded understanding of the details of how the work is done and the contextual influences on the work

Participatory Design

• Requirements are not well-defined entities but should be collaboratively negotiated during the whole design life-cycle

• Requirements are constructions produced by a number of actors (users, analysts, developers , designers) each acting in specific context

If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse.

Henry Ford

Starting from needs often is not possible

Design passes between different semantic communities

We need to assure patient

assistence, support,

privacy, …Family, support, ..human contact

We need to improve our service..and to decrease

costs… we should improve our algorithms and

infrastructures to recognize events,

situations, activities..

• Requirements for STS do change overtime • Why changes? causes by a variety of factors: – the operational environment

• e.g. new or alternative technologies or new usage conditions

– the organization within which the system is used • e.g. new organizational structure and procedures, new

regulations

– user’s needs • e.g. new functional features, new class of users as well as

new users’ preferences or ways of doing things

STSs quickly evolve

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Socio-technical systems are striving to become the next grand challenge in ICT

research

http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/ict/programme/

• SOCIONICAL is an Information and Communication Technologies Project funded under European Seventh Framework Programme (FP7),

• aiming to develop modeling, prediction and simulation methods for large scale socio-technical systems.

• the technical components of the system are not just passive mediators of human interactions (e.g. like the in Internet in social networks)

• but are active, situation aware participants in the interaction. http://www.socionical.eu/

Disaster/Emergency Scenario

Transportation Scenario

Thanks