User requirements and preferences for ITS Chapter | 4 494.3.3 Contextual techniques
Contextual techniques gather requirements within the working environment
(e.g., at the workplace of the end-user). The main techniques are observation,
ethnography, and discourse analysis. In addition, use cases and usage scenarios
can be used for getting a deeper understanding of the application context. The
main purpose of the contextual requirements elicitation process is to understand
the end-user work environment, when other methods fail to do so. The context
must be considered at all times, since several software systems exist that have
failed because they neglected the final deployment context (i.e., the workplace
where the system is intended to be used) during requirements elicitation.
- Observation
Observation is a nonintrusive technique, where the requirements’ engineer
monitors users within their working environment. The monitoring process does
not interfere with the end-users’ activities. The technique is preferred when the
end-user cannot properly describe the expected outcome, or when a compli-
cated processing pipeline comprises processes that are not accessible to end-
users. Observations can be passive, when the analyst simply observes without
interacting with the user, or active, when the analyst asks users questions during
observation. In the latter case, interviews can be used to further elucidate and
clarify requirements.
The advantages of observations are:
• They are authentic and reliable, because the analyst observes what is going
on in the environment.
• They can be used for confirming and validating requirements collected with
other techniques.
• Their cost is low.
The limitations are:• They may require multiple monitoring sessions to collect all requirements.
• Passive observation does not properly justify and clarify all user decisions.
• An active observation may result in different user behaviors, when it inter-
rupts for collecting more information.
• The duration of the observation process can be long.
- Ethnographic techniques
Ethnographic studies build on the qualitative methods used by social scien-
tists for the observation of social interactions. They monitor the interaction of
culturally different groups of people over time and try to understand the social
and cultural beliefs that affect end-user thoughts for the product or system
and thus shape their requirements (Tiwari, Rathore, & Gupta, 2012 ). They are
employed in the definition of contextual requirements, such as those related