A Methodology for Constructing User-Oriented Requirements Specifications for Large-Scale Systems Using Electronic Hypermedia

Abstract

requirements specifications are developed for large-scale systems, the final specification is usually an abstraction of the original requirements data into a text-based form that is often foreign to end-users. A method was developed for representing requirements through use of electronic multimedia. The resulting specification is capable of representing requirements and requirements data in a manner that is more representative of the real-world problem space than traditional specifications. This paper presents a method for incorporating multimedia exhibits, notably the results of rapid prototyping activities and animated simulation, into a requirements specification for large-scale C2I systems. To examine the effectiveness of the method, a multimedia requirements specification was developed based on an existing text specification for a real-world system. An experiment was also performed that showed the product of the methodology to be effective in increasing the understandability of the specification over that obtained from the text specification alone.