Method to Define User Interfaces in the Requirements Analysis Phase

Abstract

Many requirements for quality in use are elicited in the late development phase. However, if requirements are elicited in the late development phase, the development may return to the previous phase or some requirements cannot be realized due to costs and schedules. To reduce these cases, we propose a method to elicit the requirements in the requirements analysis phase. First, software developers analyze the user characteristics (UCs) of the target users and specify important quality characteristics (QCs) for quality in use and UI design items based on the relationships among UC, QC, and UI design items. Because UI design items are considerations to develop UIs, the specified UI design items are elicited as UI requirements. Thus, when important QCs are specified, UI requirements can be easily elicited by tracing the relationships from QCs to UI design items.