The traditional approaches used for the devel- opment of expert systems are mainly based on the interaction between the knowledge engineer and the domain expert. However. the role of user in the development process has been un- dermined. The human factors involved in the user/expert-system interaction are fundamental to the development of expert system and must be taken into account. This paper adopts the soft systems concept to represent the expert sys- tem development as a soft system which allows us to consider all relevant facets of the environ- ment. Based on the soft systems concept, a new methodology for establishing the expert system development system (ESDS) is introduced