Voice of the Users: A Demographic Study of Software Feedback Behaviour

Abstract

User feedback on mobile app stores, product forums, and on social media can contain product development insights. There has been a lot of recent research studying this feedback and developing methods to automatically extract requirement-related information. This feedback is generally considered to be the "voice of the users"; however, only a subset of software users provide online feedback. If the demographics of the online feedback givers are not representative of the user base, this introduces the possibility of developing software that does not meet the needs of all users. It is, therefore, important to understand who provides online feedback to ensure the needs of underrepresented groups are not being missed.In this work, we directly survey 1040 software users about their feedback habits, software use, and demographic information. Their responses indicate that there are statistically significant differences in who gives feedback on each online channel, with respect to traditional demographics (gender, age, etc). We also identify key differences in what motivates software users to engage with each of the three channels. Our findings provide valuable context for requirements elicited from online feedback and show that considering information from all channels will provide a more comprehensive view of user needs.

Mining User Feedback For Software Engineering: Use Cases and Reference Architecture

“…For instance, studies interviewed practitioners to understand how user feedback is captured and used by software engineers for specific tasks, such as verification and validation [46]; and they found that many practitioners still use a manual approach for collecting feedback and that the exploitation of feedback in their software development process is still not systematic [85]. Other interviews with practitioners highlight the importance that software developers give to user reviews in app stores to guide the design and evolution of their apps [13], [84].…”

VORDi*

“…Despite of the fact CloudComputing(CC)applicationsandservicesgohandinhand,thecloudapplicationsare notdesignedfromacustomer'sperspective.Userinvolvementinsoftwaredevelopmenthasbeen thesubjectofimportantresearchandhasbeenacknowledgedintuitivelyandaxiomaticallyto playanimportantroleinthesatisfactionofusers,contributingtosystemsuccess (Bano,2015). Thereisaseveralkindsofuser'sinvolvementamongothers,pastusers'feedback (Tizard,Rietz, &Blincoe, 2020) reviews, suggestions and comments from online sites. A multi-perspective approach to RE can potentially lead to specifications of requirements that are more likely to meettheneedsofavarietyofsystemstakeholders.VORD(Viewpoint-OrientedRequirement Definition) (Kotonya, & Sommerville, 1996) is an adaptation of the use of perspectives for REthatdoesnotsuggestanyuniqueformofpointofviewornotation.TheVORDmethodis proposedtoelicit,analyze,anddocumenttherequirementsforaService-OrientedSystem(SOS) (Sommerville,&Sawyer,1998).Theorigins of requirementsmaybefrom stakeholders,other systemsthatcommunicatewiththeproposedsystem,orfromotherorganizationsintheproposed systemsenvironmentthatmaybeinfluencedbyitsoperation.Eachrequirementsourceisthen consideredtobeaviewpoint.AlthoughVORDpresentsomepointsofweaknessaccordingto authorsin (Kotonya,&Sommerville,1996).Goal-OrientedRequirementEngineering(GORE)isa sub-areaofRE,whichaddressesusingofgoalsforeliciting,elaborating,structuring,specifying, analyzing,negotiating,documenting,andmodifyingrequirements (Lamsweerde,2009).Goalorientedapproachesofferexplicitsupportfordealingwithhigh-leveluserandstakeholders'goals makingiteasiertoconsiderdesignsolutionsandtoidentifycriteriaatanacceptablelevelof abstraction (Kolos,Eck,&Wieringa,2005).Duringtheearlyrequirementsphase,i* (Yu,1997) frameworkisusedtomodeltheenvironmentofthesystem-to-be.Itfacilitatestheanalysisofthe domainbyallowingthemodelertodiagrammaticallyrepresentthestakeholdersofthesystem, their objectives, and relationships.…”