ICSE 2012 Workshops
2012 34th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE)
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2012 First International Workshop on Usability and Accessibility Focused Requirements Engineering (UsARE), June 4, 2012, Zurich, Switzerland

UsARE 2012 – Proceedings

 Contents - Abstracts - Authors

First International Workshop on Usability and Accessibility Focused Requirements Engineering (UsARE)

Preface

Title Page


Foreword
Usability and accessibility issues are common causes why software fails to meet user requirements. However, requirements engineers still focus on functional requirements and might ignore to also elicit system usability and accessibility requirements. Improving the usability and accessibility of a system in a later development stage is costly and time consuming.
We would like to welcome you to the First International Workshop on Usability and Accessibility Focused Requirements Engineering (UsARE 2012) where we are targeting these issues. The workshop provides a platform for discussions to address the proper integration of system usability and accessibility requirements into the software engineering process. UsARE 2012 focuses on both Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Requirement Engineering (RE). Researchers and practitioners were invited to submit contributions including problem statements, technical solutions, experience reports, planned work and vision papers. Each submission was reviewed by three program committee (PC) members, which lead to a total number of seven accepted papers in all categories. We are grateful for the time and effort the PC members spent in the selection process. The workshop program has been divided into three sessions for paper presentations and one interactive session where participants will get the chance to explore and share ideas and experiences about solved and unsolved problems. Your attendance in the workshop will provide the opportunity for joint discussions to bridge the gap between HCI and RE and to go beyond existing work in these fields.

Patterns and Processes
Mon, Jun 4, 09:30 - 10:30

How Personas Support Requirements Engineering
Lydia Schneidewind, Stephan Hörold, Cindy Mayas, Heidi Krömker, Sascha Falke, and Tony Pucklitsch
(TU Ilmenau, Germany)
The aim of our research is the integration of personas into the requirements engineering process. The persona technique enables a better understanding of users’ characteristics and thereby highlights the user needs in software development. We identify fundamental supporting purposes of personas for the requirements engineering process and match these benefits to the activities of the process.
Specifying Usability Features with Patterns and Templates
Holger Röder
(University of Stuttgart, Germany)

User Centric RE
Mon, Jun 4, 11:00 - 12:30

Integrating Requirements Engineering and User Experience Design in Product Life Cycle Management
Anitha PC and Beena Prabhu
(Siemens, India)
Product development processes and best practices have come a long way in the last decade through continuous evolutions of new lifecycle and process models. Development models such as the waterfall model, spiral model, rational unified process, agile and many others have looked at efficiency of the development processes. These approaches have helped practitioners improve immensely on the efficiency and efficacy of the product development processes. However, product quality needs to be measured by parameters that go beyond the traditional criteria like performance, reliability, reusability etc. A product that has any interaction with the end user also needs to meet a fundamental requirement of being “user friendly”. Development models such as JAD (Joint Application Development) have focused on making products user friendly. Apart from achieving the technical soundness in a product, the success of the product also largely depends on how well the product addresses the primary requirements of the user such as desirability, relevance and usability. Not meeting these requirements leads to bad user experience, which, in turn can actually lead to failure of the product. This paper discusses some of the misconceptions and myths that exist in the industry regarding Requirements Engineering (RE) and User Experience Design (UXD), and how user needs typically slip through the cracks under the name of “non-functional requirements”. The paper highlights the need for RE and UXD focus during the overall product development life cycle. In the concluding section an integrated framework for RE and UXD in the PLM process is presented.
User Centered Scenario Based Approach for Developing Mobile Interfaces for Social Life Networks
Pasquale Di Giovanni, Marco Romano, Monica Sebillo, Genoveffa Tortora, Giuliana Vitiello, Lasanthi De Silva, Jeevani Goonethilaka, Gihan Wikramanayake, Tamara Ginige, and Athula Ginige
(University of Salerno, Italy; University of Colombo, Sri Lanka; Australian Catholic University, Australia; University of Western Sydney, Australia)
In recent years the explosive growth of smartphones and the evolution of mobile communication networks have certainly revolutionized the way how people communicate and access information. This revolution is even more tangible in developing countries where mobile devices are becoming the preferred way to access services for their daily activities. In this context, the development of mobile applications in the areas of health, education, agriculture, and mobile banking become a crucial factor. Unfortunately, the development process presents non-trivial human and technological challenges. The goal of our research is to support people living in developing countries to improve their lives. In particular we focused our attention on assisting farmers from rural zones of Sri Lanka in optimizing their crops.

Techniques
Mon, Jun 4, 14:00 - 15:30

Requirements Gathering for Assistive Technology That Includes Low Vision and Sighted Users
Stephanie Ludi, Alex Canter, Lindsey Ellis, and Abhisheck Shrestha
(Rochester Institute of Technology, USA)
Accessibility often concerns compatibility with third-party software in order to meet the needs of users who are disabled. The AccessLecture project seeks to transform the Apple iPad into a tool to make Math and Science class more accessible to visually impaired students. Accessing lecture material during lecture is a challenge to low vision students, in terms of the limited options that can be costly or can allow access only upon the completion of the lecture. This paper presents the techniques used to help the team gather the needs and tasks of math/science instructors and visually impaired students. The analysis of the environment, user groups and the tasks related to the course lecture were modeled in order to ascertain domain knowledge and to specify the system’s requirements.
Interplay of Usability and Requirements Engineering in Facts Analysis for Patent Disputes
Edna Rosen
(Free University of Berlin, Germany)
Patent law still relies on textual argumentation when determining inventiveness, i.e. (non)obviousness, of inventions over prior state-of-the-art, i.e. published knowledge, in patent disputes. The objective of this research is to support an industrial partner to identify usability issues supporting requirements engineering when introducing the Facts Screening and Transforming Processor (FSTP), a systematic, structured method and software for analyzing and representing facts indicating the (non)obviousness of an invention. Different qualitative research methods are used to elicit and analyze usability issues. This paper describes first attempts on how acceptance of the FSTP method and software may be enhanced by a user-centered approach comprising: identifying learnability issues of the method, creating training accordingly, and uncovering usability issues of the existing prototype. The analysis of facts for a dispute is a creative and lengthy process that requires a lot of different skills (also with respect to regional specificities in patent law). The data collected represents a small sample of users with different background knowledge (i.e. (patent) lawyers) and cases of different patent law systems (i.e. USA and Europe).
Towards a Usability Requirements Taxonomy for Mobile AAC Services
Hrvoje Belani
(University of Zagreb, Croatia)
Popularity and affordability of mobile computers, especially tablets and smart phones, is considerably rising, providing an access capability for different user groups to various ICT services. Nevertheless, software solutions and hardware devices often seem not suitable enough for some target groups, like people with complex communication needs. In order to gain understanding of the challenges for usability and accessibility requirements gathering for ICT services for aided augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), this paper presents directions towards building usability requirements taxonomy for mobile AAC services. Analysis of influential factors for building proper requirements specification for an AAC service is given. Outlines for new paradigm of so-called augmentative requirements engineering (ARE) are presented, demanding holistic view on service requirements concerning users abilities and needs, service domain and associated intermediary users.

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