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Fig. 3.2 ETHICS six-stage
design
According to Mumford (
1993
), the ETHICS approach has three core purposes:
To allow future users to have a more active role in the system development and
consequently to accept more responsibility for designing the work structure that
involves the technology. Here, it is present a user participation and socio-
technical approach;
To guarantee that new systems are adequate to the users because it is necessary
to ensure user ef
ciency and approval;
To support users to become increasingly competent in the management of the
system,
therefore creating a shared activity with technical specialists,
thus
minimizing the demand of technical sources.
Mumford (
2000
) presents a summary of ETHICS as a six-stage framework (as
shown in Fig.
3.2
), but the use of these stages can differ according to the
requirements and needs of speci
c projects and situations.
Since not all situations are the same, and there are different demands and pur-
poses to different projects, the methodology must be adapted and used in accor-
dance with the context in which it is included. The stages presented above should
be used as guidelines to help the researcher/developer to assess if his/her course of
action is strong and the most suitable to validate his/her system design. But these
stages cannot be seen as rigid rules. The researcher/developer has to bear in mind
the goals, needs, and requirements of the speci
c project when choosing the
development criteria, in order to choose the more suitable ones to the context at
hand.
It is clear that this methodology focuses on a socio-technical approach. For the
system to be ef
cient and successful, the technology must be entirely adaptable to
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