Using Task Support Requirements during Socio-Technical Systems Design
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Critical phases in socio-technical systems (STS) design are the definition of functional requirements for automated or software supported human activities while also addressing social and human interaction issues. To define automation support for human operations, STS designers need to ensure that specifications will satisfy not only non-functional requirements (NFR) of the system but also of its human actors such as human reliability/workload. However, such human factors aspects are not addressed sufficiently with traditional STS design approaches which could lead to systems failure or rejection. This paper proposes a new STS design method that addresses this problem and introduces a novel type of requirements namely Task Support Requirements (TSR) that assists in specifying the functionality that the system should have to support human agents in undertaking their tasks by addressing human limitations. The proposed method synthesizes a requirements/software engineering approach to STS design with functional allocation and an HCI perspective which facilitate application of human factors knowledge in conceptual models and evaluation through VR simulation. A case study methodology is employed in this work that allows in-depth, multi-faceted explorations of the complex issues that characterize STS.
Source: Systems
Authors: Andreas Gregoriades, Alistair Sutcliffe
Institutions: Cyprus University of Technology, University of Manchester
Language: English
Subfield: Social Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,728
OpenAlex ID: W4402274841