Towards a Catalogue of Mobile Requirements Elicitation

Nitish Patkar Pascal Gadient Mohammad Ghafari Oscar Nierstrasz

Software Composition GroupUniversity of Bern, Switzerland

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Live studies1

Keynotes1

Speaches3

Talks6

Presentations22

This year’s REFSQ

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This year’s REFSQ

Traditional RE29

Mobile RE4

Motivation

• More than 4 million apps available on major app stores• High uninstall rate• Mobile apps are fundamentally different than other software systems

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How does the community treat mobile requirements elicitation?

Research questions

1. Which are the existing elicitation techniques for mobile apps?

2. What are the characteristics of the current research?

3. How can we help practitioners with technique selection?

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Which are the existing elicitation techniques for mobile apps?

We performed 3 iterations on 5 digital libraries

Search keywords: “mobile requirements elicitation”, “mobile requirement elicitation”, “mobile requirements engineering”

Out of 182 publications we finally selected 60 publications

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Analyst-centric Collaboration-centric Data-centric Stakeholder-centric

Gamification

Interview/Survey/Questionnaire

Modelling

Persona/ User profile

Wizard of Oz

Activity theory

Brainstorming

CRC card sessions

Crowdsourcing

Focus groups

Mobile RE app

Photo essays

Prototyping

Scenarios

Story telling

Social networking/ Wiki

Viewpoints, Six thinking hats

App description mining

App log/ App usage data mining

Mining similar apps

Observation/ Contextual data/ Reflection

Opinion mining

Mobile feedback app

Feedback on MVP

We found total 24 techniques

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Analyst-centric Collaboration-centric Data-centric Stakeholder-centric

Gamification

Interview/Survey/Questionnaire

Modelling

Persona/ User profile

Wizard of Oz

Activity theory

Brainstorming

CRC card sessions

Crowdsourcing

Focus groups

Mobile RE app

Photo essays

Prototyping

Scenarios

Story telling

Social networking/ Wiki

Viewpoints, Six thinking hats

App description mining

App log/ App usage data mining

Mining similar apps

Observation/ Contextual data/ Reflection

Opinion mining

Mobile feedback app

Feedback on MVP

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Mobile app specific techniques

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20

Using social network sites or wikis

User feedback on MVP

Photo essays

Mobile feedback app

App store mining for similar apps

App description mining

Activity theory

Wizard of Oz

Viewpoint or six thinking hats

Story telling

Modeling/Ontology

Gamification

CRC sessions

Brainstorming

Persona and user profiles

Focus groups/ workshops

Prototyping

Crowdsourcing

App log or app usage data mining

Observation/contextual data/reflection

Opinion mining

Interview/Survey/Questionnaire

Scenarios

Mobile RE app

# Total papers

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20

Using social network sites or wikis

User feedback on MVP

Photo essays

Mobile feedback app

App store mining for similar apps

App description mining

Activity theory

Wizard of Oz

Viewpoint or six thinking hats

Story telling

Modeling/Ontology

Gamification

CRC sessions

Brainstorming

Persona and user profiles

Focus groups/ workshops

Prototyping

Crowdsourcing

App log or app usage data mining

Observation/contextual data/reflection

Opinion mining

Interview/Survey/Questionnaire

Scenarios

Mobile RE app

# Total papers

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Elicitation techniques in literature

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0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20

Using social network sites or wikis

User feedback on MVP

Photo essays

Mobile feedback app

App store mining for similar apps

App description mining

Activity theory

Wizard of Oz

Viewpoint or six thinking hats

Story telling

Modeling/Ontology

Gamification

CRC sessions

Brainstorming

Persona and user profiles

Focus groups/ workshops

Prototyping

Crowdsourcing

App log or app usage data mining

Observation/contextual data/reflection

Opinion mining

Interview/Survey/Questionnaire

Scenarios

Mobile RE app

# Total papers

30% of the publications suggest using mobile devices or mobile apps for elicitation

Elicitation techniques in literature

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What are the characteristics of the current research?

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2

1619

41

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

Stakeholder-centric Analyst-centric Data-centric Collaboration-centric

Categories of elicitation techniques

66% of the publications suggest using collaborative techniques

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Effectiveness of the techniques is questionable

1. Does it reduce the cost of elicitation?

2. Does it increase the quality of the requirements?

3. Does it generate new requirements?

4. Is the technique scalable?

5. How usable is the technique?

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Evaluation of proposed techniques is questionable

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35

not available

Controlled experiment

Case study

Student evaluation

# Papers

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35

not available

Controlled experiment

Case study

Student evaluation

# Papers

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48% of the publications did not perform any evaluation

Evaluation of proposed techniques is questionable

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35

not available

Controlled experiment

Case study

Student evaluation

# Papers

Persona, Focus groups, workshops, Interviews, QuestionnairesObservation or Contextual data

Crowdsourcing

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Non-functional requirements…

… are vastly ignored:

Missing guidelines for developers about security, data privacy, performance, usability

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Special users’ needs …

… are vastly ignored:

~10% of the US population between the age group 24-64 suffers from one of many disabilities

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How can we help practitioners with technique selection?

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Data Stakeholders and users

Similar apps Complex app analysis Known users? Geographically

distributed usersUsers with special

needs

Gamification

App description mining

How can we select techniques

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Future work

1. Extension of this study2. Industrial exploratory study

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2

1619

41

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

Stakeholder-centric Analyst-centric Data-centric Collaboration-centric0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20

Using social network sites or wikis

User feedback on MVP

Photo essays

Mobile feedback app

App store mining for similar apps

App description mining

Activity theory

Wizard of Oz

Viewpoint or six thinking hats

Story telling

Modeling/Ontology

Gamification

CRC sessions

Brainstorming

Persona and user profiles

Focus groups/ workshops

Prototyping

Crowdsourcing

App log or app usage data mining

Observation/contextual data/reflection

Opinion mining

Interview/Survey/Questionnaire

Scenarios

Mobile RE app

# Total papers

Which are the existing elicitation techniques for mobile apps?

What are the characteristics of the current research?

How can we help practitioners with technique selection?