Systematizing requirements elicitation technique selection

ContextThis research deals with requirements elicitation technique selection for software product requirements and the overselection of open interviews.ObjectivesThis paper proposes and validates a framework to help requirements engineers select the most adequate elicitation techniques at any time.MethodWe have explored both the existing underlying theory and the results of empirical research to build the framework. Based on this, we have deduced and put together justified proposals about the framework components. We have also had to add information not found in theoretical or empirical sources. In these cases, we drew on our own experience and expertise.ResultsA new validated approach for requirements technique selection. This new approach selects techniques other than open interview, offers a wider range of possible techniques and captures more requirements information.ConclusionsThe framework is easily extensible and changeable. Whenever any theoretical or empirical evidence for an attribute, technique or adequacy value is unearthed, the information can be easily added to the framework.     

HCI and business practices in a collaborative method for augmented reality systems

ContextEvery interactive system is composed of a functional core and a user interface. However, the software engineering (SE) and human–computer interaction (HCI) communities do not share the same methods, models or tools. This usually induces a large work overhead when specialists from the two domains try to connect their applicative studies, especially when developing augmented reality systems that feature complex interaction cores.ObjectiveWe present in this paper the essential activities and concepts of a development method integrating the SE and HCI development practices, from the specifications down to the design, as well as their application on a case study.MethodThe efficiency of the method was tested in a qualitative study involving four pairs of SE and HCI experts in the design of an application for which an augmented reality interaction would provide better user performance than a classic interactive system. The effectivity of the method was evaluated in a qualitative study comparing the quality of three implementations of the same application fragment (based on the same analysis model), using software engineering metrics.ResultsThe first evaluation confirmed the ease of use of our method and the relevance of our tools for guiding the design process, but raised concerns on the handling of conflicting collaborative activities. The second evaluation gave indications that the structure of the analysis model facilitates the implementation of quality software (in terms of coupling, stability and complexity).ConclusionIt is concluded that our method enables design teams with different backgrounds in application development to collaborate for integrating augmented reality applications with information systems. Areas of improvement are also described.     

The state of the art in automated requirements elicitation

ContextIn large software development projects a huge number of unstructured text documents from various stakeholders becomes available and needs to be analyzed and transformed into structured requirements. This elicitation process is known to be time-consuming and error-prone when performed manually by a requirements engineer. Consequently, substantial research has been done to automate the process through a plethora of tools and technologies.ObjectiveThis paper aims to capture the current state of automated requirements elicitation and derive future research directions by identifying gaps in the existing body of knowledge and through relating existing works to each other. More specifically, we are investigating the following research question: What is the state of the art in research covering tool support for automated requirements elicitation from natural language documents?MethodA systematic review of the literature in automated requirements elicitation is performed. Identified works are categorized using an analysis framework comprising tool categories, technological concepts and evaluation approaches. Furthermore, the identified papers are related to each other through citation analysis to trace the development of the research field.ResultsWe identified, categorized and related 36 relevant publications. Summarizing the observations we made, we propose future research to (1) investigate alternative elicitation paradigms going beyond a pure automation approach (2) compare the effects of different types of knowledge on elicitation results (3) apply comparative evaluation methods and multi-dimensional evaluation measures and (4) strive for a closer integration of research activities across the sub-fields of automatic requirements elicitation.ConclusionThrough the results of our paper, we intend to contribute to the Requirements Engineering body of knowledge by (1) conceptualizing an analysis framework for works in the area of automated requirements elicitation, going beyond former classifications (2) providing an extensive overview and categorization of existing works in this area (3) formulating concise directions for future research.     

Tripartite Effects: Exploring Users’ Mental Model of Mobile Gestures under the Influence of Operation,Handheld Posture,and Interaction Space

ABSTRACT

In this research, we conducted an elicitation study with 54 participants to evaluate user-defined mobile gestures given three types of operations, handheld postures, and interaction spaces, respectively, to investigate the effects of these factors on mental model. The results of the elicitation study revealed that each of the three factors significantly affected the users’ mental models, which could be reflected by the characteristics (e.g., nature, number of steps, and spatial utility) of the user-defined mobile gestures. In addition, we found that users tended to assign different roles to mid-air and on-screen gestures based on their motor ability given a handheld gesture and their interpretation of the characteristics and requirements of an operation. We further derived a set of gestures commonly defined in the elicitation study for a list of representative operations, and we share our insights into users’ mental models and the implications on future mobile-gesture design in different contexts.     

Ubiquitous enterprise service adaptations based on contextual user behavior

Recent advances in mobile technologies and infrastructures have created the demand for ubiquitous access to enterprise services from mobile handheld devices. Further, with the invention of new interaction devices, the context in which the services are being used becomes an integral part of the activity carried out with the system. Traditional human–computer interface (HCI) theories are now inadequate for developing these context-aware applications, as we believe that the notion of context should be extended to different categories: computing contexts, user contexts, and physical contexts for ubiquitous computing. This demands a new paradigm for system requirements elicitation and design in order to make good use of such extended context information captured from mobile user behavior. Instead of redesigning or adapting existing enterprise services in an ad hoc manner, we introduce a methodology for the elicitation of context-aware adaptation requirements and the matching of context-awareness features to the target context by capability matching. For the implementation of such adaptations, we propose the use of three tiers of views: user interface views, data views, and process views. This approach centers on a novel notion of process views to ubiquitous service adaptation, where mobile users may execute a more concise version or modified procedure of the original process according to their behavior under different contexts. The process view also serves as the key mechanism for integrating user interface views and data views. Based on this model, we analyze the design and implementation issues of some common ubiquitous access situations and show how to adapt them systematically into a context-aware application by considering the requirements of a ubiquitous enterprise information system.

Shifting knowledge from analysis to design: Requirements for contextual user interface development

There is consensus among the members of the HCI community as well as among software developers that work tasks and user characteristics (i.e. context) should play a leading role in the course of system development. There seems to be less consensus on how the information about users and work tasks should be acquired and subsequently moved to the design process of a development project. Due to the use of unifying methods and concepts--such as object-orientation-- that might be used for analysis, design and implementation, this transition seems to be facilitated. However, few inputs have been provided to guide developers on how to shift knowledge from analysis to design when task- and user knowledge are considered to be inherent parts of the development knowledge. This paper details the interface between analysis and design, reviews existing concepts to bridge the gap between the two phases of development, and enriches these findings with some empirical results from a survey with respect to practical experiences. From these findings, requirements to successfully shift knowledge in the early phases of software development have been derived.     

Empirical Research in Mid-Air Interaction: A Systematic Review

ABSTRACT

Mid-air interaction is a distinct style of natural HCI (Human-Computer Interaction). In mid-air interaction, users make use of their whole body—with a strong focus on hands—and apply gestures, postures, and movements to interact with digital content on distant displays or remote devices. Although the idea of exploiting body movements and gestures in HCI is not new, mid-air interaction is now possible due to the availability of reasonably priced depth cameras and sensors. This article presents a systematic review of empirical research in mid-air interaction, based on a corpus of 104 publications from 2011 to 2018. The review includes: (a) a retrospective on mid-air interaction, which outlines its historical development and clarifications on important concepts; (b) current application domains of mid-air interaction; (c) user requirements methods, focusing on gesture elicitation studies; (d) dimensions of prototyping and design; (e) empirical evaluation methods and issues; (f) a discussion on several trends and challenges for further research and development.     

Experience with user-centred requirements engineering

This paper describes the application of human–computer interaction (HCI) principles and methods to requirements engineering in a case study development of a visualisation tool, ADVISES, to support epidemiological research. The development approach consisted of scenario-based design and analysis of the users’ tasks and mental model of the domain. Prototyping and storyboarding techniques were used to explore design options with users as well as specifying functionality for two versions of the software to meet the needs of novice and expert users. Application of HCI functional allocation heuristics to guide system requirements decisions is explained. An evaluation of the prototype was carried out to assess the extent to which the expert model would support public health professionals in their analysis activities. The results of the design exploration requirements analysis study are reported. The implications of scenario-based design exploration, functional allocation and software architecture are discussed.     

Identification of non-functional requirements in textual specifications: A semi-supervised learning approach

ContextEarly detection of non-functional requirements (NFRs) is crucial in the evaluation of architectural alternatives starting from initial design decisions. The application of supervised text categorization strategies for requirements expressed in natural language has been proposed in several works as a method to help analysts in the detection and classification of NFRs concerning different aspects of software. However, a significant number of pre-categorized requirements are needed to train supervised text classifiers, which implies that analysts have to manually assign categories to numerous requirements before being able of accurately classifying the remaining ones.ObjectiveWe propose a semi-supervised text categorization approach for the automatic identification and classification of non-functional requirements. Therefore, a small number of requirements, possibly identified by the requirement team during the elicitation process, enable learning an initial classifier for NFRs, which could successively identify the type of further requirements in an iterative process. The goal of the approach is the integration into a recommender system to assist requirement analysts and software designers in the architectural design process.MethodDetection and classification of NFRs is performed using semi-supervised learning techniques. Classification is based on a reduced number of categorized requirements by taking advantage of the knowledge provided by uncategorized ones, as well as certain properties of text. The learning method also exploits feedback from users to enhance classification performance.ResultsThe semi-supervised approach resulted in accuracy rates above 70%, considerably higher than the results obtained with supervised methods using standard collections of documents.ConclusionEmpirical evidence showed that semi-supervision requires less human effort in labeling requirements than fully supervised methods, and can be further improved based on feedback provided by analysts. Our approach outperforms previous supervised classification proposals and can be further enhanced by exploiting feedback provided by analysts.     

Towards an Ontological Approach to Information System Security and Safety Requirement Modeling and Reuse

ABSTRACT

Misuse cases are currently used to identify safety and security threats and subsequently capture safety and security requirements. There is limited consensus to the precise meaning of the basic terminology used for use/misuse case concepts. This paper delves into the use of ontology for the formal representation of the use-misuse case domain knowledge for eliciting safety and security requirements. We classify misuse cases into different category to reflect different type of misusers. This will allow participants during the requirement engineering stage to have a common understanding of the problem domain. We enhanced the misuse case domain to include abusive misuse case and vulnerable use case in order to boost the elicitation of safety requirements. The proposed ontological approach will allow developer to share and reuse the knowledge represented in the ontology thereby avoiding ambiguity and inconsistency in capturing safety and security requirements. OWL protégé 3.3.1 editor was used for the ontology coding. An illustration of the use of the ontology is given with examples from the health care information system.     

Speech-acts based analysis for requirements discovery from online discussions

Online discussions about software applications and services that take place on web-based communication platforms represent an invaluable knowledge source for diverse software engineering tasks, including requirements elicitation. The amount of research work on developing effective tool-supported analysis methods is rapidly increasing, as part of the so called software analytics. Textual messages in App store reviews, tweets, online discussions taking place in mailing lists and user forums, are processed by combining natural language techniques to filter out irrelevant data; text mining and machine learning algorithms to classify messages into different categories, such as bug report and feature request.Our research objective is to exploit a linguistic technique based on speech-acts for the analysis of online discussions with the ultimate goal of discovering requirements-relevant information. In this paper, we present a revised and extended version of the speech-acts based analysis technique, which we previously presented at CAiSE 2017, together with a detailed experimental characterisation of its properties. Datasets used in the experimental evaluation are taken from a widely used open source software project (161120 textual comments), as well as from an industrial project in the home energy management domain. We make them available for experiment replication purposes. On these datasets, our approach is able to successfully classify messages into Feature/Enhancement and Other, with F-measure of 0.81 and 0.84 respectively. We also found evidence that there is an association between types of speech-acts and categories of issues, and that there is correlation between some of the speech-acts and issue priority, thus motivating further research on the exploitation of our speech-acts based analysis technique in semi-automated multi-criteria requirements prioritisation.     

An empirical study on the implementation and evaluation of a goal-driven software development risk management model

ContextBuilding a quality software product in the shortest possible time to satisfy the global market demand gives an enterprise a competitive advantage. However, uncertainties and risks exist at every stage of a software development project. These can have an extremely high influence on the success of the final software product. Early risk management practice is effective to manage such risks and contributes effectively towards the project success.ObjectiveDespite risk management approaches, a detailed guideline that explains where to integrate risk management activities into the project is still missing. Little effort has been directed towards the evaluation of the overall impact of a risk management method. We present a Goal-driven Software Development Risk Management Model (GSRM) and its explicit integration into the requirements engineering phase and an empirical investigation result of applying GSRM into a project.MethodWe combine the case study method with action research so that the results from the case study directly contribute to manage the studied project risks and to identify ways to improve the proposed methodology. The data is collected from multiple sources and analysed both in a qualitative and quantitative way.ResultsWhen risk factors are beyond the control of the project manager and project environment, it is difficult to control these risks. The project scope affects all the dimensions of risk. GSRM is a reasonable risk management method that can be employed in an industrial context. The study results have been compared against other study results in order to generalise findings and identify contextual factors.ConclusionA formal early stage risk management practice provides early warning related to the problems that exists in a project, and it contributes to the overall project success. It is not necessary to always consider budget and schedule constraints as top priority. There exist issues such as requirements, change management, and user satisfaction which can influence these constraints.     

Gamification in software engineering – A systematic mapping

ContextGamification seeks for improvement of the user’s engagement, motivation, and performance when carrying out a certain task, by means of incorporating game mechanics and elements, thus making that task more attractive. Much research work has studied the application of gamification in software engineering for increasing the engagement and results of developers.ObjectiveThe objective of this paper is to carry out a systematic mapping of the field of gamification in software engineering in an attempt to characterize the state of the art of this field identifying gaps and opportunities for further research.MethodWe carried out a systematic mapping with a view to finding the primary studies in the existing literature, which were later classified and analyzed according to four criteria: the software process area addressed, the gamification elements used, the type of research method followed, and the type of forum in which they were published. A subjective evaluation of the studies was also carried out to evaluate them in terms of methodology, empirical evidence, integration with the organization, and replicability.ResultsAs a result of the systematic mapping we found 29 primary studies, published between January 2011 and June 2014. Most of them focus on software development, and to a lesser extent, requirements, project management, and other support areas. In the main, they consider very simple gamification mechanics such as points and badges, and few provide empirical evidence of the impact of gamification.ConclusionsExisting research in the field is quite preliminary, and more research effort analyzing the impact of gamification in SE would be needed. Future research work should look at other game mechanics in addition to the basic ones and should tackle software process areas that have not been fully studied, such as requirements, project management, maintenance, or testing. Most studies share a lack of methodological support that would make their proposals replicable in other settings. The integration of gamification with an organization’s existing tools is also an important challenge that needs to be taken up in this field.     

Extracting and analyzing time-series HCI data from screen-captured task videos

Recent years have witnessed the increasing emphasis on human aspects in software engineering research and practices. Our survey of existing studies on human aspects in software engineering shows that screen-captured videos have been widely used to record developers’ behavior and study software engineering practices. The screen-captured videos provide direct information about which software tools the developers interact with and which content they access or generate during the task. Such Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) data can help researchers and practitioners understand and improve software engineering practices from human perspective. However, extracting time-series HCI data from screen-captured task videos requires manual transcribing and coding of videos, which is tedious and error-prone. In this paper we report a formative study to understand the challenges in manually transcribing screen-captured videos into time-series HCI data. We then present a computer-vision based video scraping technique to automatically extract time-series HCI data from screen-captured videos. We also present a case study of our scvRipper tool that implements the video scraping technique using 29-hours of task videos of 20 developers in two development tasks. The case study not only evaluates the runtime performance and robustness of the tool, but also performs a detailed quantitative analysis of the tool’s ability to extract time-series HCI data from screen-captured task videos. We also study the developer’s micro-level behavior patterns in software development from the quantitative analysis.     

Effective Communication in Requirements Elicitation: A Comparison of Methodologies

The elicitation or communication of user requirements comprises an early and critical but highly error-prone stage in system development. Socially oriented methodologies provide more support for user involvement in design than the rigidity of more traditional methods, facilitating the degree of user–designer communication and the ‘capture’ of requirements. A more emergent and collaborative view of requirements elicitation and communication is required to encompass the user, contextual and organisational factors. From this accompanying literature in communication issues in requirements elicitation, a four-dimensional framework is outlined and used to appraise comparatively four different methodologies seeking to promote a closer working relationship between users and designers. The facilitation of communication between users and designers is subject to discussion of the ways in which communicative activities can be ‘optimised’ for successful requirements gathering, by making recommendations based on the four dimensions to provide fruitful considerations for system designers.     

智能需求获取与建模研究综述

需求获取和建模是指从需求文本或记录中获取显式和隐式的需求,并通过表格化、图形化、形式化等方法构建相应模型的过程,是软件开发过程中极为关键的一步,为后续系统设计与实现铺平道路,提高软件开发效率和质量,提升软件系统稳定性和可行性.研究者们在需求获取与建模方面获得了一系列研究成果,根据其关注阶段不同,可以将它们分为需求知识提...     

Needs’ elaboration between users,designers and project leaders: Analysis of a design process of a virtual reality-based software

ContextThe participation of users in the design process is recognized as a positive and a necessary element as artifacts suit their needs. Two complementary approaches of users’ involvement co-exist: the user-centered design and the participatory design. These approaches involve learning process from users to designers and vice versa. However, there has no research in design of virtual reality (VR)-based software dealing with how the elaboration of needs is actually distributed in time and among users, designers and project leaders, as well as how it is actually supported by tools and methods.ObjectiveThis paper aims to observe, in a real design project of a virtual reality-based software, how the various stakeholders (users, designers, project leaders) actually participate by sharing and pulling pieces of information from the process of needs elaboration, and how these contributions evolve throughout the decisions made in the course of the project.MethodOur method, based on the observation of the practices in collective design, allows us to collect and analyze the relationship between each possible action (e.g., elicitation), each stakeholder who initiates these actions (e.g., users) and each phase of the design process (e.g., evaluation phase), and the dynamics of the construction of needs.ResultsOur results detail how the elicited needs are dealt with by designers, users and/or project leaders: (1) we show a strong contribution of users in the design, compared to others stakeholders, (2) among the needs elicited by users, most have been validated by the designers, (3) some elicited needs could have been firstly rejected and finally validated and implemented.ConclusionWe identify the reasons which justify and explain our results confronting them to the literature. We underline the conditions have been satisfied in our study in order to involve effectively users in the design of emerging technologies.     

Automated COSMIC Function Point measurement using a requirements engineering ontology

ContextThere are two interrelated difficulties in requirements engineering processes. First, free-format modelling practices in requirements engineering activities may lead to low quality artefacts and productivity problems. Second, the COSMIC Function Point Method is not yet widespread in the software industry because applying measurement rules to imprecise and ambiguous textual requirements is difficult and requires additional human measurement effort. This challenge is common to all functional size measurement methods.ObjectiveIn this study, alternative solutions have been investigated to address these two difficulties. Information created during the requirements engineering process is formalized as an ontology that also becomes a convenient model for transforming requirements into COSMIC Function Point Method concepts.MethodA method is proposed to automatically measure the functional size of software by using the designed ontology. The proposed method has been implemented as a software application and verified with real projects conducted within the ICT department of a leading telecommunications provider in Turkey.ResultsWe demonstrated a novel method to measure the functional size of software in COSMIC FP automatically. It is based on a newly developed requirements engineering ontology. Our proposed method has several advantages over other methods explored in previous research.ConclusionManual and automated measurement results are in agreement, and the tool is promising for the company under study and for the industry at large.     

Measuring effectiveness of HCI integration in software development processes

Integrating human-computer interaction (HCI) activities in software engineering (SE) processes is an often-expressed desire. Two metrics to demonstrate the impact of integrating HCI activities in SE processes are proposed. Usability Goals Achievement Metric (UGAM) is a product metric that measures the extent to which the design of a product achieves its user-experience goals. Index of Integration (IoI) is a process metric that measures the extent of integration of the HCI activities in the SE process. Both the metrics have an organizational perspective and can be applied to a wide range of products and projects. An attempt has been made to keep the metrics easy to use in the industrial context. While the two metrics were proposed mainly to establish a correlation between the two and thereby demonstrate the effectiveness of integration of HCI in SE processes, several other applications seem likely. The two metrics were evaluated in three independent studies: a classroom-based evaluation with two groups of students, a qualitative feedback from three industry projects, and a quantitative evaluation using 61 industry projects. The metrics were found to be useful, easy to use, and helpful in making the process more systematic. Our studies showed that the two metrics correlate well with each other and that IoI is a good predictor of UGAM. Regression analysis showed that IoI has a somewhat greater effect on UGAM in projects that use the agile process model than the waterfall process and in the projects that are executed as a contracted software development service than in the projects in product companies. UGAM also correlated well with the traditional usability evaluations.     

Technology-assisted reconstruction: a new alternative to the experience sampling method

ABSTRACT

Despite the recent increase in interest in the experience sampling method (ESM), researchers have repeatedly criticised the high burden and levels of interruption that it imposes on participants, and alternative cost-effective methods, such as the Day Reconstruction Method (DRM), have been adopted by the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) community. In this paper, we review the use of ESM and DRM in the HCI field and argue for a new paradigm called Technology-Assisted Reconstruction (TAR), according to which passively logged data of users’ behaviours are used in assisting the later reconstruction of experiences and behaviours. We discuss five methods of Technology-Assisted Reconstruction that we have developed in our past work and conclude with a framework that highlights three directions for Technology-Assisted Reconstruction.