Contributions from cognitive engineering to requirements specifications for complex sociotechnical systems: A case study in the context of healthcare in Brazil

Abstract

This paper aims at presenting a case study on the use of human factors and ergonomics to enhance requirement specifications for complex sociotechnical system support tools through enhancing the understanding of human performance within the business domain and the indication of high-value requirements candidates to information technology support. This work uses methods based on cognitive engineering to build representations of the business domain, highlighting workers’ needs, and contributing to the improvement of software requirements specifications, used in the healthcare domain. As the human factors discipline fits between human sciences and technology design, we believe that its concepts can be combined with software engineering to improve understanding of how people work, enabling the design of better information technology.