Sociotechnical Walkthrough Workshop@AECT17

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@AECT17, Isa Jahnke / www.isajahnke.net
The SocioTechnical Walkthrough, STWT
Isa Jahnke, Alexander Nolte, So Mi Kim, Joi Moore
University of
Pittsburgh
University of
Missouri
University of
Missouri
University of
Missouri

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Roadmap next 3 hours
• What is Sociotechnical?
• Understanding Sociotechnical Walkthrough as method
• Small Group Work (applying STWT)
Proofed concept!
“Improving the Coordination of Collaborative Learning with Process Models”
Carell, Herrmann, Menold, in: CSCL2005

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Problems? Have you ever faced
challenges like this...
• Your organization makes decision for new technology
and you have to work with it
• Technology does not do what you want to do
• Technology does not match task
• Technology does not work when you need it
• You have better tools in mind but your organization don‘t want to hear
• You built “work arounds“ to avoid the system
• …
Technology Tasks

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We can engineer/design and control
technical systems
(and technical system rules)…
…but social practices evolves!
We cannot control how people use technology
“Social Systems”, Niklas Luhmann, 1998

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Technology for or of Teaching/Learning?
“Technology should not be the
driver for teaching-learning but
pedagogy should come first and
then you choose the right app”
…what do you
think is the
problem with that?

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The wicked problem
• To know the ’right’ technology, you
have to test it and to use it
• To use technology, you have to change
your current social practice
--> a new social
practice
Co-evolutionary growth
of both the Technical and
the Social together

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Technical or social or sociotechnical ?
HCI
Person-Tool-Relationship… …woohoo really?

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Social or technical or sociotechnical ?
Organization
Culture
Situation/
Context

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Elements of processes / coordination
– Actors
– Activities
– Interdependencies (between resources)
Coordination Theory
Malone and Crowston (1990)

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• Relating goals/activities, actors and technologies to each
other
AND
• Managing interdependencies (e.g., shared objects, make
visible relationships)
Coordination Theory
Malone and Crowston (1990)
• The result of one activity
can be the input for
another activity

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Our approach:
Shift from technical to sociotechnical design
The positive impact of a technical system on the Social
depends on its way of being integrated into organizational
processes, competence structures, and so forth …

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Aspects of socio-technical
Features of the technical
component
Communication and
cooperation
Work processes
Training and
competence
Roles and actors
Ressources
Conditions, events,
exceptions
Interplay between
technical components
Needed: a type of documentation which take all these aspects systematically into
account and provides enough flexibility (for multiple perspectives)
as well as consistency (for the sustainability of decisions)

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Documentation for socio-technical
Graphical diagrams as a documentation form
• Integration of formal and informal structures
• Integration of technical and social aspects
• Integration of ethnographic material
• Tools for editing and presentation
Experience: The success of the documentation depends essentially
on the communication processes
.
Research
since 1997
.
Many
cases
.
Different
fields
.
.
Prof. Thomas Herrmann
& IMTM-IAW team!
www.imtm-iaw.rub.de

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The example of ElevatED - A tool for strategic
improvement planning (SIP) in schools
• Goal: schools apply strategic improvement planning / SIP
• New technology called ElevatEd shall help
• With our IE Lab, we did a traditional usability study
• …and sociotechnical design (technology development and
preparation for implementation) with 3 teachers and 3 principals
We wanted to know:
1. What kind of activities exist in current SIPs, in what ways
are users (principals, teachers, and others) involved, and
what kind of digital systems are connected to the SIPs
workflows?
2. What challenges do principals and teachers face while
carrying out the SIP in schools?
Any ideas
how the
models
look?

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STWT
Founder: Prof. Dr. Thomas Herrmann & team, Univ. of Bochum, IMTM-IAW Germany
Sociotechnical Walkthrough is
a method to design and develop
technology use in groups (small-big)
by identifying and documenting current
social practices and then to identify and
document how technologies can help
toward new social practices (processes)
in a participatory design setting.

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Communication-oriented intervention method
(preparation for change management)
• Structured
• Focused
• Facilitated
• Continuous
• Sustainable
 Socio-technical Walkthrough (STWT)
… communication and
documentation
(aims to integrate technical,
social, organizational,
cultural aspects

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Outcome of a STWT
• Decisions about the features of the socio-technical system –
and about the work processes of the future
• Decisions about decisions which are postponed or left open
• Start of a learning process
• Sustainable description about the characteristics of the
socio-technical system

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Background of STWT, combination of…
• Observations…
– Allow for an unobstructed view on a process and allow to easily identify deviations
– Only works for processes that are visible and observed subjects are prone to
behave differently than they would without observation
• Interviews…
– Allow for identifying aspects of processes that cannot be observed
– Only one perspective on a process is considered at a time and ones perspective on
a process might be obstructed or biased.
• Workshops…
– Allow for exchanging perspectives and building common ground
– Scheduling could be hard and only a limited number of people can reasonably
participate

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Socio-technical walkthrough
The idea behind the approach
knowledge
gap Stakeholder
(process)
Consultant
(process modeling)
Participatory
collaborative
modeling

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Task of the facilitatorPreparing
workshops
Work-
shop 1
Work-
shop 2
Work-
shop n
Developing
or discussing
the work
process and
the models
step-by-step
Asking
prepared
questions
Collecting
problems
comments,
proposals,
documents
Refocus
on the
model
modifying
models,
visualizing
notes
Outcome: models, notes,
Work documents
 Ideas for first changes of work practice
SocioTechnical WalkThrough
Core facilitator activities

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Example – graphical modelling
Roles / Actors
Information and instruments
Tasks and Processes

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An example… (result of phase 2)
TOOLS
Pieces of Information needed for coordination.
Tasks and Processes

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The example of ElevatED - A tool for strategic
improvement planning (SIP) in schools
• Goal: schools improve their strategic improvement planning
• New technology called ElevatEd shall help
• With our IE Lab, we did a traditional usability study
• …and sociotechnical design (technology development and
preparation for implementation) with 3 teachers and 3 principals
We wanted to know:
1. What kind of activities exist in current SIPs, in what ways
are users (principals, teachers, and others) involved, and
what kind of digital systems are connected to the SIPs
workflows?
2. What challenges do principals and teachers face while
carrying out the SIP in schools?

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Let’s model together

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Role – carried out by single persons or
groups like departments. They usually
come with a set of rights and
responsibilities.
Activity – tasks which are carried out by
roles. They usually use entities or modify
them.
Entity – static aspects of processes (e.g.
objects, data, systems)
activity [1]
role
document
technical
system
activity [2]
SeeMe Basics
Basic elements

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Before we start modeling….
What about the modeling notation?
• Explain basic constructs of the SeeMe notation…
– At the beginning of the
workshop or
– When an element appears
for the first time

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expects
something from
role [1]
activity [1]
role [2]
activity [2]
entity [1] entity [2]
These standard definitions can be altered by attaching
alternate labels to the respective relations.
carries
out
belongs
to
leads to
affects
can be
described by
modifies
is used
by
relates to
SeeMe Basics
Relations

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Elements of modeling notations
• Organizational structure
• Roles (e.g. engineer, project manager)
• Rights and responsibilities
• Functions
• Workflow
• Executed by roles or systems
• Same granularity as other functions
• Information
• Data and containers (artifacts)
• Resources
• In- and Out-put for (Sub-)processes
• Control
• Branches and conditions

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…let’s model somethingWebeditor
https://cme.iaw.rub.de/
We want to design and develop a tool for AECT 2018 that includes the online
program, conference registration and communication.
What activities should participants be able to conduct with such a tool?

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Let’s reflect together

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…let’s have a break

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STWT preparation
• Get an idea about the context of a process beforehand (e.g.
through interviews or document analysis)
– Start and end of the process
– Circumstances under which process takes place
• Break down overall goal to smaller goals for each workshop
• Set number of workshops and time for each workshop
• Assemble a suitable group
– All stakeholders should be present (including decision makers)
– Potentially invite domain experts or future customers
– It may become necessary to alter group during a modeling project
• Prepare guiding questions for workshop

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What makes a “good” question?
• A good guiding question:
– Is open: How, what, why, …
– Makes participants think about their concrete work environment
– Fosters creativity
– Relates a new solution to current practice
– Connects both old and new work process
• Examples:
– Think about a concrete case that you are currently working on. Does this case fit to
the process that is being modeled?
– How could the new software improve your current work process?
– What would help you to work more effectively or efficiently?
– What would help you to improve collaboration with your colleagues?

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Tips -- During STWTs sessions
General facilitator tasks
• Open and guide discourse
(Overview / background / goals)
• Try to integrate all participants into the discussion:
– All participants are experts, at least for their own practice / perspective
• Encourage critical questioning
• Keep track of the workshop goals
• Stay neutral, do not take a certain position / perspective.
• Ask for specific example

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Concrete guidelines
• Go through the process step-by-step
• Start with activities, then roles, then entities
• Each contribution should leave a trace in the model
• Use generally accepted terms
• Walk through process parts multiple times (if necessary)
• Show conflicts or diverging perspectives in the model
• Make use of comments and additional flipcharts
• Re-focus participants on the model

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General questions
• What happens next?
• What happens before?
• Under which conditions do you do this?
• When do you do something else?
• Who does that?
• Who is involved?
• Which resources do you need to do that?
• What is the result of this?
Questions are generally related to the characteristics of
processes.

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Tips -- Enrich the model

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Tips -- structure your model

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Tips - Structure your model
Do not focus on structure too much!

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Document management
structuringeliciting
updating
Quality assurance
Tips -- Don´t try to be overly complete

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comments sketching
Tips -- Use informal elements and
vagueness
…while still using model elements!

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Tips -- Interplay between facilitator and
modeler
• Having a modeler is crucial!
• Facilitator and modeler have to work as a team:
– Get to know each other beforehand
– Set rules for collaboration
– The modeler has to pay as much attention about what is going on as the facilitator
– The modeler can alter the model by himself (if this is ok with the facilitator)
• The modeler should collect open questions
• The modeler may ask questions
• Use breaks in workshops to exchange views

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• Prepare dummy elements before a workshop
• Copy and paste elements by using…
– The context menu
– The “edit”-menu
– Shortcuts (CTRL + C, etc.)
– Duplicate elements through CTRL + D
• Elements will be created at the cursor position when
pasting
Tips and tricks for the modeler
Advanced functions of the SeeMe editor

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Using the SeeMe Editor
Presenting models
• Prepare a model for presentation by hiding
elements using the hide tool
• Showing elements
using the grey button at
the bottom of an
element

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Modeling notations

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Specifics of visual modeling notations
• Consist of elements (visual shapes) and relations
(connections between them)
• A syntax describes how these elements may be
interconnected with each other
• A semantic describes their meaning in relation to real life
phenomena
Some modeling notations contain multiple diagram types (e.g. UML)
altersprogrammer code

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…let’s model something
Model something related to your work in SeeMe
in 30 minutes in small groups of 3-5
Webeditor
https://cme.iaw.rub.de/

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Relation of STWT to other methods
JAD (Joint Application Design) (Crawford, 1994) Shares the relevance of
workshop/session series such as STWT but not the necessity of diagrammatic
representations of work processes
Scenario based techniques (Carroll, 1995) STWT: focus on diagrams which
cover a variety of possible scenarios, scenarios are an optional means for illustration
whereas STWT does not illustrate optimal but real current practices at first
Contextual Design (Holtzblatt, 2004) Validates models – also in workshops – which
are provided by an ethnographer, wheras STWT integrates the users as co-designers, model
development and validation together, and focusses on work processes
MUST (Method for Participatory Design) (Kensing et al., 1996)
intervention is seen as a communication process similar to STWT, different kind of modelling
Analysis of task analysis procedures (Jonassen, 1986) task analysis process:
inventorying, describing, selecting, sequencing, and analyzing tasks, differentiated analysis
procedures
Herrmann, Kunau, Loser, Menold, in: PD 2004

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Publications
• Herrmann et al., 2004, STWT in the beginning
• Herrmann, 2006 SeeMe
• Kunau, 2005, STWT in a PhD thesis
• Herrmann, Carrell, Menold, CSCL, 2005, proof that with models it is better than without!
• Herrmann, Loser, Jahnke, 2007, STWT later
• Prilla & Jahnke, 2012, STWT in a service project
• Nolte & Herrmann, 2016, STWT from facilitation perspective
Want to use the SeeMe Editor?
• Email the SeeMe Team at Univ. of Bochum, IAW-IMTM, Germany:
seeme@iaw.ruhr-uni-bochum.de
• Webeditor online:
https://cme.iaw.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/
• Further information / Dr. Isa Jahnke:
jahnkei@missouri.edu

Sociotechnical Walkthrough Workshop@AECT17

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