Using mobile RE tools to give end-users their own voice

Researchers highlight end-user involvement in system design as an important concept for developing useful and usable solutions. However, end-user involvement in software engineering is still an open-ended topic. Novel paradigms such as service-oriented computing strengthen the need for more active end-user involvement in order to provide systems that are tailored to individual end-user needs. Our work is based on the fact that the majority of end-users are familiar with mobile devices and use an increasing number of mobile applications. A mobile tool enabling end-user led requirements elicitation could be just one of many applications installed on end-users' mobile devices. In this paper, we present a framework of end-user involvement in requirements elicitation which motivates our research. The main contribution of our research is a tool-supported requirements elicitation approach allowing end-users to document needs in situ. Furthermore, we present first evaluation results to highlight the feasibility of on-site end-user led requirements elicitation

Requirements engineering for intelligent environments

The field of Intelligent Environments (IE) is maturing to a level at which a range of sophisticated applications are emerging. Such systems aim to be context-aware, especially being adaptable to possibly unpredictable circumstances. An area of significant potential is that of ‘ambient assisted living’, with significant advances in fields such as smart spaces, classrooms, and assisted living space for the elderly or people with disabilities. In recent years, however, it has been recognised that numerous IE systems have been developed without adopting best practises from software engineering. The work presented here focuses on the requirements engineering stage and presents a framework for IE systems in which an intrinsic component is context-awareness. Whilst the framework is intended as a general IE model, we are currently applying it to the specific area of ambient assisted living and it is being employed on the POSEIDON project. It is anticipated that such real world application of the model will help endorse its conception and facilitate further refinement of the framework

Distilling Privacy Requirements for Mobile Applications

As mobile computing applications have become commonplace, it is increasingly important for them to address end-users’ privacy requirements. Privacy requirements depend on a number of contextual socio-cultural factors to which mobility adds another level of contextual variation. However, traditional requirements elicitation methods do not sufficiently account for contextual factors and therefore cannot be used effectively to represent and analyse the privacy requirements of mobile end users. On the other hand, methods that do investigate contextual factors tend to produce data that does not lend itself to the process of requirements extraction. To address this problem we have developed a Privacy Requirements Distillation approach that employs a problem analysis framework to extract and refine privacy requirements for mobile applications from raw data gathered through empirical studies involving end users. Our approach introduces privacy facets that capture patterns of privacy concerns which are matched against the raw data. We demonstrate and evaluate our approach using qualitative data from an empirical study of a mobile social networking application

Extended OCL for Goal Monitoring

Monitoring human-computer interaction aids the analysis for understanding how well software meets its purpose. In particular, monitoring human-computer interactions with respect to a user's goal model helps to determine user satisfaction. By formalizing a goal model, runtime monitors can be automatically derived. The REQMON system monitors the satisfaction of goal models. Recently, an OCL compiler was developed for REQMON. The OCL was extended slightly to address temporal and real-time constraints. Now, goal models can be represented in the extended OCL, from which runtime monitors can be compiled. The resulting REQMON system appears to be easier to use comes the abstract

RS4AAL: A Process for Specifying and Analyzing Non-Functional Requirements in Ambient Assisted Living Systems

Context: The increasing life expectancy of the world’s population is a reality, and combined with sharply declining birth rates, these advances in life expectancy could lead to a rapidly aging population around the world. Technologies such as Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) can provide services that enable older people to live independently, safely and healthily. During system development, it is important to ensure good specification of Non-Functional Requirements (NFR). These are requirements that define how the system will behave in certain situations and may impact the end goal of the software if not considered during the analysis and development of the project. Aims: To meet and identify all the needs and functions provided to the users of the system, this article provides a process for specifying and analyzing nonfunctional requirements in Ambient Assisted Living, called RS4AAL, which helps the requirements engineer to specify and analyze the important requirements in the development of this system by capturing the requirements with techniques such as storytelling, reuse, and legal requirements. Results: Based on systematic mapping, key nonfunctional requirements for the Health and Care in Life subdomain were identified, as well as some legal requirements that may impact system development. Conclusions: A key finding is that the personal context of older people, legal requirements such as ISO/PRF TS 823042, and AAL Guidelines for Ethics, Data Privacy and Security directly affect the specification of non-functional requirements and the design of systems. The RS4AAL helps with this mapping by showing the requirements engineer what to consider when designing AAL systems

Human Interaction in Learning Ecosystems based on Open Source Solutions

Technological ecosystems are software solutions based on the integration of heterogeneous software components through information flows in order to provide a set of services that each component separately does not offer, as well as to improve the user experience. In particular, the learning ecosystems are technological ecosystems focused on learning and knowledge management in different contexts such as educational institutions or companies. The ecosystem metaphor comes from biology field and it has transferred to technology field to highlight the evolving component of software. Taking into account the definitions of natural ecosystems, a technological ecosystem is a set of people and software components that play the role of organisms; a series of elements that allow the ecosystem works (hardware, networks, etc.); and a set of information flows that establish the relationships between the software components, and between these and the people involved in the ecosystem. Human factor has a main role in the definition and development of this kind of solutions. In previous works, a metamodel has been defined and validated to support Model-Driven Development of learning ecosystems based on Open Source software, but the interaction in the learning ecosystem should be defined in order to complete the proposal to improve the development process of technological ecosystems. This paper presents the definition and modelling of the human interaction in learning ecosystem