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Abstract Special methodological approaches are needed, particularly in the area of modelling, to develop socio-technical systems in the field of CSCW. Engineering tasks and the development of organizational structures have to be integrated including elements of participatory design. From a theoretical background, needs for new modelling concepts can be derived: representation of contingency, explicit incompleteness, multiplicity of perspectives and self-referential meta-relations. Based on these concepts we developed the semi-structured, socio-technical modelling method SeeMe and used it in five empirical cases to assess its practical relevance. We found that SeeMe can help people to become aware of the specific features and requirements of 'their' socio-technical system and therefore enables them to take part in processes of learning and improvement. Notes Our notion of roles is chosen to indicate that individuals have a specific relevance and meaning on the sociological level which is different to their existence as psychological systems. This connotation of roles should not be confused with organizational positions or a set of rights in a workflow system. In cases where it is necessary to represent an individual person, this can be done in SeeMe by using the concept of roles; since the function of maintaining the identity as a person can also be considered as a role. Even if the state transitions of or the interactions between technical systems are pre-programmed in analogy to autonomous or learning behaviour, there is still the need for the success of the programming efforts to be evaluated in controlled experiments.
Herrmann et al. (Mon,) studied this question.