Multimedia Requirements Engineering ( MeRE ’ 06 ) — Beyond MeRE Descriptions

Most requirements development and management efforts focus on the production of accessible and validated descriptions. Several methods and tools are in use today that aid the requirements engineer in writing, revising, and communicating requirements as text. This approach has several disadvantages. First, text constitutes a language barrier, particularly a challenge for global companies with distributed product teams. Second, text is an abstract form of communication and as such requires the audience to interpret what is written. This interpretation is always based on past experience, preconceptions, and digestibility of the text (style, amount, intended audience). Third, without apposite use of supporting tools, even the most carefully crafted requirements text may quickly become outdated, inconsistent, or overwhelmingly long. This workshop explores the possibility to base the requirements development and management effort on multimedia representations, limiting the use of text to areas where it belongs: Rather than making the textual description and its structure the starting point of analysis, the audiovisual depiction now serves as the big picture of and framework for requirements analysis. Text as just another medium may still be employed for detailed, technical requirements or for legal concerns. A particularly well-suited use of multimedia technology seems the capture of stakeholders’ requests during requirements development. Approaches that integrate novel uses of portable devices for this task are of special concern for this effort. They may alleviate the common concern that the effort commanded by handling multimedia might outweigh the gained benefits. The general theme of the workshop is communication and modeling of requirements that are expressed in media other than text. 1.1. Topics