The document discusses user-driven requirements engineering for mobile social software. It proposes an approach called iRequire that uses mobile devices to enable end-users to document their needs and requirements for future social software applications in context and in situ. The iRequire tool allows end-users to capture pictures of their environment, document needs and rationales, and view summaries on their mobile devices. Captured needs are stored locally but envisioned to be distributed and visualized to inform requirements engineering. The approach aims to better capture individual end-user needs to support development of customized mobile social software applications.

1. User-Driven RequirementsEngineering for Mobile Social Software Norbert Seyff, Florian Graf City University London Centre for HCI Design London, EC1V 0HVB n.seyff@soi.city.ac.uk

2. Motivation 2 Social software is an exciting and important phenomenon in today's software and business world and its weaving into the fabric of daily life is faster than expected (Tepper, 2003) Emerging trends within social software: provision of social software for mobile devices integration of location-based services and social software integration of social software and service-centric systems Mobile Social Software (MoSoSo): End-users are familiar with sophisticated mobile devices Increasing number of MoSoSo is available MoSoSo allows end-users to be socially connected anytime, anywhere Norbert Seyff, Florian Graf

3. How to develop MoSoSo? 3 Norbert Seyff, Florian Graf Little is known on software engineering methods and tools for Mobile Social Software Research on social software engineering is needed to support the realization of customized MoSoSo Requirements engineering is important to gather individual end-user’s needs and to address the design factors critical to the success of mobile social applications (Smith, 2005) State-of-the-art RE approaches do not provide specific method or tool support to gather individual stakeholder needs

4. What we considered 4 Cultural, emotional, social and material aspects of life often trigger end-users’ requirements (Sutcliffeet al., 2005) Understanding particular characteristics and patternsof life, and investigating new locations and situations, supports stakeholders in envisioning how mobile technology can facilitate social interaction (Kolog et al., 2007) “…people have only limited ability to describe what they do and how they do it without immediate accessto the social and material aspects of their lives.”(Blomberg et al., 2003) Norbert Seyff, Florian Graf

5. In situ End-User led RE with iRequire Vision: Mobile requirements elicitation tools enable end-users of future social software to blog their needs in situ Provide basic blogging features Provide guidance and support Support different ways of requirementsdocumentation Turn every mobile into an RE tool Allow involvement of a large number of end-users 5 Norbert Seyff, Florian Graf iRequire Approach

6. The iRequire Tool 6 iRequire is currently available for Windows Mobile smartphones iRequire is one of many applications installed on end-users’ mobile devices End-users can start iRequire like any other application Norbert Seyff, Florian Graf Starting iRequire

7. Taking Picture of the Environment 7 iRequire Start Screen Taking a Picture Norbert Seyff, Florian Graf

8. Documenting Need and Rationale 8 Norbert Seyff, Florian Graf Capturing a Need Capturing a Rationale / Task

9. Reviewing Summary iRequire displays a summary of thecaptured information After a final confirmation, the system stores the captured information on the device End-users are invited to capture another need 9 Norbert Seyff, Florian Graf Summary

10. 10 Capturing Contextual Information iRequire goes beyond end-user driven documentation of contextual information Detection of the end-user’s position (longitude, latitude) with the help of GPS Timestamp stored together with need Context context-sensing Norbert Seyff, Florian Graf

11. Visualization of End-User Needs iRequire stores data on the mobile device We envision to automatically distribute end-user needs using wireless networks End-user needs have to be communicated and visualized in “end-user language” A prototype shows how Google Mapscan be used to visualize end-userneeds 11 Norbert Seyff, Florian Graf

12. End-User Needs Informing RE Individual end-users’ needs can be seen as a starting point for the development of Mobile Social Software. However, consecutive discussions and negotiations are needed to agree on well-defined requirements End-users’ needs gathered with iRequire could: inform state-of-the-art requirements elicitation and negotiation approaches such as EWW be used as input for community-oriented RE web platforms could be used in social software (e.g. Facebook) to inform friends about needs 12 Norbert Seyff, Florian Graf

13. Conclusion and Future Work iRequire is a first step towards end-user driven requirements elicitation for MoSoSo The conducted research provides preliminary answers to our research questions Future research will focus on: Usability and Utility Studies iRequire updates (distribution of needs) Improved capturing of contextual information Informing system design with contextual information Visualization of needs in social networks 13 Norbert Seyff, Florian Graf