User Expressions Translated into Requirements
Birgitta Bergvall‐Kåreborn, Anna Ståhlbröst · Human Technology · 2010
Grounding the development of mobile and ubiquitous services on actual needs and behaviors of users, rather than on designers intuition, is a well established tradition today. However, gathering data about users in different contexts usually result in large amounts of data that have to be analyzed and translated into requirements. This is a crucial process in the development cycle and its outcome is usually very dependent on the preconceptions of the developers or researchers. Despite this strong element of subjective influence the translation process is seldom made transparent. Nor are the user needs related to psychological discussions and existing taxonomies. The aim of this paper is, therefore, to contribute to the field by presenting a process for translating user expressions to needs and later to requirements using Reiss taxonomy of human needs as a theoretical base. Using this translation process we were able to identify two hierarchical levels of needs: needs of a service and needs in the service. The process also made it possible for us to see needs hidden in general expressions and to reformulate them accordingly. Further, it generated a clear traceability from user expressions to requirements, and finally, confirmed the importance of focusing on, and understanding, the situated needs of users.