On the Role of Value Sensitive Concerns in Software Engineering Practice

2015 IEEE Fifth International Workshop on Requirements Patterns (RePa)

2015

Equality is an important aspect in todays diverse communities, which plays a significant role in communities social sus-tainability. This paper looks into modeling equality as a social sustainability dimension using a generic model of sustainability. Patterns of equality requirements are identified in this generic model. This model and respective patterns are then used in software requirements elicitation of a case study.

Section: Equality and Social Sustainabilitymentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Values In Software Engineeringmentioning

confidence: 99%

Building social sustainability into software: Case of equality

2015 IEEE Fifth International Workshop on Requirements Patterns (RePa)

2015

“…Thus, "if we can design systems that embody the values of a community, we will have gone a long way towards being able to reliably design systems that will be embraced by that community" [37]. Yet, despite the impacts of human values on software success, values are generally underused in the software engineering [15].…”

Section: B Value Sensitive Design (Vsd)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…According to [28], most the VSD work appears in the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) area. Indeed, [36], [15], [56], [42], [35], [28], [41], [29], [70] all discuss application of VSD in user interface and systems design.…”

Section: B Value Sensitive Design (Vsd)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Engineering Requirements for Social Sustainability

Proceedings of ICT for Sustainability 2016

2016

Abstract-Software is no longer a passive tool, but is an active agent in shaping modern communities. Yet, to date, software engineers do not endeavour to explicitly state requirements which a software system must fulfil if it is to positively contribute to the well-being (that is the social sustainability) of its user community. This paper presents a proposal on how to bridge this gap. It notes that social sustainability requirements stem from key societal values, such as equity, security, education, which can be elicited into value patterns. Such patterns can then serve as templates for software requirements specification. The viability of this proposal is demonstrated through formation of equity value patterns, which are instantiated as requirements to 6 sample studies. We observe that while each organisation and sub-community will have own diverse cultural and traditional values with respective requirements, the fundamental notions (such as equity, security, freedom) that serve as the core of social sustainability remain relatively stable. It is such values that we propose to elicit into patterns for requirements specification.

“…Barn states in [6] that "ownership and property; privacy, freedom from bias, universal usability, trust, autonomy, informed consent, identity and others" are the most applicable values to Information systems. We can see that these are rather similar to equality/social sustainability indicators.…”

Section: Related Work On Equalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating Equality Requirements for Software Systems

EPiC Series in Computing

Equality is one of the key requisites of social sustainability: history shows that deprivation of some groups in favour of others inevitably leads to social tensions, unrest, and uprisings. As nowadays software systems control access to services, information, and even education, we maintain that all software systems ought to address equality requirements. To facilitate this, we present a template for equality requirements derived through study of 6 sample requirements specifications. The utility of the template is evaluated through a study of its application by a group of expert requirements engineers. The results obtained from a group that used the template are contrasted to the results from another group that completed the same task without the template. This study observes a substantial positive feedback from the template use.