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Socio Technical Systems (STS) Design
World UXUI Design Summit 2015
Vikram Rao | UX Practice Head, eMids Technologies

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Agenda
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• What are Socio Technical Systems?
• A peek into history
• Socio Technical System Stack
• Contemporary Socio Technical System
• Socio Technical System and User Centered Design
• Why Socio Technical System Approach?
• Designing Socio Technical Systems
• Socio Technical System in Action…
• Challenges of Socio Technical Systems

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Sociological Impact on Technology
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“... technologists cannot simply leave the social and ethical
questions to other people, because the technology directly
affects these matters”
~ Berners-Lee

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What are Socio Technical Systems (STS)?
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• Socio technical systems (STS) are:
• systems that include technical systems but also
operational processes and people who use and
interact with the technical system.
• a holistic approach to the design of engineering
projects.
Modern day definition:
A socio-technical system (STS) is a social system operating on a technical base, e.g. email, chat, bulletin
boards, blogs, Wikipedia, E-Bay, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

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A simple example…
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Ved is a back end web developer (he eats
data bases for breakfast and spends his days
crunching code).
• Take Ved and Vrinda, they are both web specialists and they both work on a website.
Interact closely
• Every few months the site needs updating and Ved works hard behind the scenes
coding away, he then hands the project over for Vrinda to work her magic on (or vice
versa as is the case in a typical user centered process these days).
Vrinda is a front end web designer (she makes
words sing and graphics come alive in simple
and user-friendly interfaces that people love).

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A simple example…
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• This works fine initially but as the site grows with more employees being
taken on, it becomes a little less straight forward.
• We soon have multiple people working on increasingly specialized areas of the website with developers and
designer often needing to interact and collaborate but finding them self's stuck in their separate departments.
• Ved and Vrinda's site now requires a more holistic and non-linear approach to overcome this stumbling block as
it has now become what we can call a complex socio technical system.

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Summarizing
• Firstly STS is complex in that it has
multiple elements such as lines of
code, databases, graphics and so on,
with all of these different things
needing to interact and being
dependent on each others functioning.
• And secondly it is socio technical as it
represents an interaction between the
technical domains of computer
software and the human interaction.
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A peek into history
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• The term socio technical systems was originally coined by
Emery and Trist (1960) to describe systems that involve a
complex interaction between humans, machines and the
environmental aspects of the work system.
• Initial focus was directed at the design of work systems in
factories and offices, and initially focused on traditional non-
computing manufacturing systems
• The general aim was to investigate the organization of work and
to see whether it could be made more humanistic,
incorporating aspects such as the quality of working life.
• By the 1970’s, the design and introduction of computing
systems as STS for use in organizational settings had begun.
• Period between 1980 – 90’s: Key terms used to denote this
proposition include user involvement, participatory design, user
satisfaction, human relations, and for the political dimension,
workplace democracy.

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Socio Technical Systems Stack
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Contemporary Socio Technical Systems Design
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• While the STS design movement has been a source of inspiration for many students and
designers of contemporary information systems that embody human-computer interaction, the
concepts and practices for socio-technical design have evolved.
• Historically, STS design seemed predicated on the percept that an IS can somehow be designed
to be correct, consistent, and complete prior to its implementation, deployment and use.
Instead, it has become evermore clear from a variety of studies and sources that IS development
is incremental, iterative, and ongoing when situated within a complex organizational setting.
• The classic prescription for user involvement in participatory design says little about which
users, user representatives, or customers are chosen in practice to participate in a system
design effort.

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Socio Technical System Design vs. User Centered Design
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• HCI researchers have clearly been influenced by socio technical
ideas. They have been instrumental in filling in some of the
gaps.
• Legacy STS design was prescriptive, but contemporary scholars
of human-computer interaction prefer empirically grounded
studies with descriptive results or proactive “action research”
agenda, and thus work towards development of an STS design
practice that builds on such grounds.
• STS looks at the various stakeholders and societal needs at
large, while UCD looks at an individual (end user’s) or group of
individuals’ needs
• STS is more holistic and looks at the integration and interaction
between the various sub systems, while UCD would typically
cover individual subsystems and their functioning

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Consequences of not considering the socio technical systems approach
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• Filters help on a personal level but transmitted spam as a system
problem has never stopped growing.
• While inbox spam is constant, due to filters, transmitted spam grew
from 20% to 40% in 2002-2003, to 60-70% in 2004, to from 86.2%
to 86.7% of the 342 billion emails sent in 2006, to 87.7% of spam in
2009 and 89.1% in 2010.
• Filters address spam as a user problem, but it is really a community
problem. Transmitted spam uses Internet processing, bandwidth
and storage whether users behind their filter walls see it or not.
• Pure technical design gives a socio-technical gap between what technology supports
and what people want.
e.g. Designing email to let anyone message anyone without permission
gave the spam problem.

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Why Socio Technical System Approach?
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• Many people now acknowledge that systems which are developed
using a socio-technical approach are more likely to be acceptable
to end users and to deliver real value to stakeholders.
• Socio technical approaches can help the design of organisational
structures and business processes as well as technical systems.
• There is a need to consider the ways that the social and technical
aspects are interdependent and interact, which is central to the
performance and behaviour of STSs.
Very relevant today in Healthcare organizations:
Healthcare organizations are very well suited for applying STS designs. The functioning of hospitals mainly depends on
the capabilities of its staff and employees. Today most hospitals still use a "Scientific Management" approach in
structuring their organization, which can easlly be seen is one of the causes of the unsatisfactory functioning of
hospitals. Applying STS design principles can improve that significantly.

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Designing keeping the various communities and their needs in mind!
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We need to increase
our service .. And
decrease our cost!
< />; $%&
(#@!}..*
We need to assure
patient assistance
and support…
!
… we should improve
our algorithms and
infrastructures to
recognize events,
situations, activities….
Family, support,
care… human
contact…

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Socio Technical System in Action…
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Monitoring
System
Alerting
System
Reporting
System
The
unattended
patient is
leaving the
room…
The caretaker
gets a mobile
alert (via the
sensor in the
door).
The patient has
a fall before the
attender can
act (camera
catches it)!
The closest
nursing care
unit is
notified.
The treating
doctor is also
sent an alert.
The patient’s
kin is also
informed of the
fall.
The patient
undergoes
treatment and
nursing care.
The report is
automatically
generated
based on the
data.

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Impeding research question!
Is technology, organizations and users
ready for such systems?

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Challenges of Socio Technical Systems
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• The core problem is not technological
• Difficulty in obtaining SMEs for the various sub systems of a STS and
understand how they interact with each other
• Understand the central role of People
• Identify real needs and integrate them into the design.
• Users must easily push their preferences into the system execution.
• Research Opportunities are limited
• In a typical STS, observation and contextual inquiry only yield the best results.
• Its not always possible to obtain information about the environment and its
impact early on.
• Law and Society
• Law compliance: effects of existing laws and new laws trying to regulate this
new reality.
• Adaptability to the evolution of user’s needs and organization changes.

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Designing STS - Considerations
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• STS design and 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

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Designing STS – Employing ‘Systems Thinking’
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• Systems Thinking - is the process
of understanding how things,
regarded as systems, influence or
are interdependent on one
another within a whole.
• Eg. In nature, systems thinking examples include
ecosystems in which various elements such as air,
water, movement, plants, and animals work
together to survive or perish.

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References
• Socio-technical systems: From design methods to systems engineering by Gordon
Baxter and Ian Sommerville.
• Socio-Technical Design by Walt Scacchi, Institute for Software Research.
• Smart socio-technical design in healthcare organizations by Glenn Robert and Jim
Zazzali.

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Vikram Rao | vikram.mohan.rao@gmail.com | +91 9845694979