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Development of a computer-based interviewing tool to enhance the requirements gathering process

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Abstract

Software design is an area where it is most important to elicit an accurate and complete set of requirements. Determining the users’ requirements and their qualitative satisfaction with a developing product are two major problems which arise, often due to the different backgrounds and perspectives of the different stakeholders, including the software engineer, the domain expert and the end-user. Involving users throughout the design and development process is an essential part of any project. Computer-based interviewing has been found to be a valuable tool in eliciting information, which can also enhance interpersonal communication afterwards. This paper discusses the development of a computer interviewing tool to facilitate the gathering of user requirements and conducting user evaluations.

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Acknowledgements

EPSRC funded this research project, the UsE-IT (Usability Engineering–Interviewing Tool) project. Thanks are due to Iain Kay, who aided in the development of the interview authoring tool.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Division of Applied Computing, The University of Dundee, Dundee, UK

    Katrina Hands, D. Ramanee Peiris & Peter Gregor

Authors
  1. Katrina Hands
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  2. D. Ramanee Peiris
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  3. Peter Gregor
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Katrina Hands.

Appendix

Appendix

Interviewees:

Details of each interviewee and the date/time that their details were recorded.

Authors:

Details of authors, including their password for accessing the interview-authoring interface. Authors can only edit interviews that they created.

Interviews:

Details of each interview, including which author created the interview.

IntervieweeInterviews:

A linking table between interviewees and interviews. Contains details of whether the interview is in progress or completed, how many times the interviewee has attempted the interview and how many times they have completed it.

Questions:

Contains the question text and question type. The Question TypeID controls how the question is displayed.

InterviewQuestions:

A linking table between interviews and questions enabling questions to be a part of more that one interview. Contains details of the question priority, the topic and whether it is mandatory (must be answered).

IntervieweeQuestions:

A set of “working questions” for the current interviewee.

QuestionTypes:

A list of question types, which is used to control how the question is displayed and how the answer is saved.

QuestionTopics:

Details of the question topics so that questions can be grouped into different topics.

Answers:

Details of the answers, including when the answer was saved and whether a comment has been added.

AnswerOptions:

Details of the answer choices available for multiple-choice, checkbox and drop-down list questions.

AnswerKeywords:

Details of keywords required for answer interpretation.

AnswerRules:

Details of rules required for answer interpretation.

AnswerActionsTopics:

Details of priority changes to be carried out to groups of questions of a particular topic.

AnswerActionsQuestions:

Details of priority changes to be carried out to individual questions.

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Hands, K., Peiris, D.R. & Gregor, P. Development of a computer-based interviewing tool to enhance the requirements gathering process. Requirements Eng 9, 204–216 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00766-003-0185-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00766-003-0185-x

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