Validating a Sociotechnical Heuristic Evaluation Method

Abstract

The usefulness of a set of heuristics for the evaluation of sociotechnical systems will be examined. The usefulness of this evaluation is comparable to heuristics of interactive systems. The criterion of such usefulness include, whether persons who are not necessarily experts at the intersection between work design and sociotechnical design find more aspects with the help of sociotechnical heuristics which give critical or positive indications for the evaluation of a sociotechnical solution. An experiment with 60 participants shows that the intuitive assumption that more of such aspects could be found with the knowledge of heuristics cannot be confirmed for individual students. The use of heuristics supports a more even distribution of the found aspects across different categories. After evaluating the outcome of this study, it becomes clear that more detailed investigations on the effectiveness of sociotechnical heuristics are necessary and which special methodological requirements have to be observed.