Efficiency and Effectiveness of Requirements Elicitation Techniques for Children

Abstract

[Context] The market for software targeting children, both for education and entertainment, is growing. Existing work, mainly from HCI, has considered the effectiveness of elicitation techniques for eliciting requirements from children as part of a design process. [Objective] However, we are lacking work which compares requirements elicitation techniques when used with children. [Methods] This study compares five elicitation techniques, taking into consideration the effectiveness and efficiency of each technique. Techniques were used with a total of 54 children aged 8-13, eliciting requirements for a museum flight simulator. We compare techniques by looking at the number and type of requirements discovered, perceived participant satisfaction, resources required, perceived usefulness, and requirements coverage of domain specific categories. [Conclusions] We observed notable differences between the techniques, including the effectiveness of observations and relative ineffectiveness of questionnaires. We present a set of guidelines to aid industry in eliciting requirements for child-friendly software.