HAMSTERS (Human – centered Assessment and Modelling to Support Task Engineering for Resilient Systems) is a tool-supported task modelling notation for representing human activities in a hierarchical and structured way, with the intention of supporting modelling consistency, coherence and conformity between user tasks and interactive systems.

Example of a HAMSTERS task model
Example of a HAMSTERS task model

Similarly to MAD and CTT, qualitative time is expressed using LOTOS-like temporal operators attached to the parent node. Quantitative time is represented by expressing task duration (such as with CTT) and delay before tasks availability. The implementation of HAMSTERS was done with the objective of making it easily extendable and it results in a CASE tool that contributes to the engineering of task models. HAMSTERS features a task model simulator as a dedicated API for simulating the execution of task sequences.

The following section present the main elements of the notation:

The chapter associated to the tutorial that was made at IHC 2015 is available here.