the socio-technical walkthrough

Thomas Herrmann, from the University of Bochum in Germany, gave an interesting presentation to folks gathered for the joint CREW & MOCHI talk last night. We had to move the location of the talk because a water pipe had broken in the building (West Hall) and a very loud alarm was going off. We quickly found another meeting location in the Shapiro undergraduate library and had about 20 people in the room, thankful to be out of the very cold weather.

Professor Herrmann described work his group has done on techniques for improved communication support during the description of technical systems that are embedded within social processes.

His group has developed a semi-structured visual modeling technique, as well as a method for working with stakeholders that are involved in the situation the technical systems are being made for. The method is called the socio-technical walkthrough (STWT). It takes an initial version of the current processes, expressed in their modified process flow diagramming language, and during a series of short workshops, iteratively walks stakeholders through the processes - step-by-step - and enables discussion of how a technical system might better support those processes.

For more information, please see http://www.imtm-iaw.rub.de/home/aktuelles/index.html.en