Software Cinema-Video-based Requirements Engineering

Abstract

The dialogue between end-user and developer presents several challenges in requirements development. One issue is the gap between the conceptual models of end-users and formal specification/analysis models of developers. This paper presents a novel technique for the video analysis of scenarios, relating the use of video-based requirements to process models of software development. It uses a knowledge model-an RDF graph-based on a semiotic interpretation of film language, which allows mapping conceptual into formal models. It can be queried with RDQL, a query language for RDF. The technique has been implemented with a tool which lets the analyst annotate objects as well as spatial or temporal relationships in the video, to represent the conceptual model. The video can be arranged in a scenario graph effectively representing a multi-path video. It can be viewed in linear time order to facilitate the review of individual scenarios by end-users.Each multi-path scene from the conceptual model is mapped to a UML use case in the formal model. A UML sequence diagram can also be generated from the annotations, which shows the direct mapping of film language to UML. This sequence diagram can be edited by the analyst, refining the conceptual model to reflect deeper understanding of the application domain.The use of the Software Cinema technique is demonstrated with several prototypical applications. One example is a loan application scenario for a financial services consulting firm which acted as an end-user.

Workshop videos for requirements communication

“…Videos have been used as a rich source of data for the purpose of documentation and research in requirements engineering [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20] and wide range of areas that involve research how humans interact with technology. The textbook on "Video in Qualitative Research" by Heath et al [10] provides an overview of the potentials and pitfalls of capturing natural behavior in real-life scenes.…”

“…Creighton extended vision videos with traceability to requirements [20]. In collaboration with Siemens, product visions were illustrated as high-end marketing videos where users interacted with system components.…”

“…Some are complementary to ours and could accommodate integration. For example, Creighton's Software Cinema technique describes how videos may be traced with UML diagrams [20]. Also, usability engineering may rely on videos for capturing screen content and facial expression of test users with tools like Morae 2 .…”

“…Over time, such capture of human-technology interaction with video was taken up in workplace studies, human-computer interaction, and computer-supported cooperative work. In requirements engineering, videos of human-computer interaction were used to document system context [11], product vision [12][13][14], or scenarios [15][16][17] and used as an input to requirements workshop, to analyze usability [18,19], or to build specifications [20]. However, no research explored how videos produced as an outcome of requirements engineering are perceived by developers who would use the video as an input for development.…”

Collaboration in Software Engineering: A Roadmap

“…Follow-on work has examined the use of a mobile, PDA-based interface for ART-SCENE, taking advantage of the mobility of the interface to show use cases to customer stakeholders in-situ [22]. The Software Cinema project examined the use of video for recording dialog between engineers and stakeholders, allowing these conversations to be recorded and analyzed in depth [23].…”