Requirement Engineering (RE) research has evolved in the last decades, addressing new challenges emerging from advanced software development methodologies, and from extending the user population to special groups of users. Although more and more products are developed for special needs user groups, only few research works address the unique challenges of eliciting requirements for users with whom such collaboration requires overcoming substantial barriers. In parallel, the use of gamification techniques has been investigated for the purpose of enhancing RE task performance, typically not addressing special user groups. In this paper, we focus on using gamification for RE tasks, intended for three special user groups: young children, individuals on the spectrum of autism, and elderly adults. We propose a model representing cognitive barriers hindering the RE process with the aforementioned groups of users, and set the ground for a research agenda which addresses theseTebxtarriers of communication and engagement, by exploring gamification as a facilitator of inclusive RE.
Requirements engineering (RE) is an important part of software development, and has
a considerable effect on the quality of the deployed software and on customer
satisfaction. Several challenges were found in RE, many of which are related to stakeholder
involvement in, and contribution to, the various RE tasks – requirements elicitation,
specification and validation ([
Copyright (c) by the paper’s authors. Copying permitted for private and academic purposes.
This position paper aims to explore the use of gamification for facilitating inclusive RE. It briefly reviews existing literature in order to understand what has been achieved so far in inclusive RE, and to what extent gamification has been included in these research efforts (section 2). Next, we propose a model of communication and engagement barriers hindering RE with special populations and discuss the potential contribution of gamification for overcoming these barriers (section 3). We summarize the paper by presenting guiding research questions for future research (section 4). 2 2.1
Gamification is defined as the use of game design elements in non-game contexts in
order to encourage individuals to participate in certain tasks and contribute to their
success [
Research works concerning gamification in RE have thus far been mostly examined
empirically with student participants (e.g., [
In the following subsection, we bring several examples of special groups for whom gamification has been used for eliciting requirements. 2.2
RE for young children, who are still unable to express their needs of a software
product, is usually done by educational experts, whereas the intended users are involved in
the process only as testers [
The involvement of children in the RE process of products designed for them is still relatively scarce. The few attempts made highlight the need for a systematic method guiding the elicitation of requirements from young or disabled children, in a way that would lend these requirements to be “translatable” to the developers.
Some effort has been invested during the last decade in researching RE for autistic
spectrum disorder (ASD) users. The main progress in this area is the acknowledgment
that AURE (Autistic Users RE) requires special attention, such as visual over verbal
communication, that rationalization plays an important role in this process, as does
prepping a detailed report of the process conclusion [
Documented challenges of requirements elicitation for ASD users (typically
focusing on children) stem mostly from the fact that verbal communication is very difficult,
and while some advantages were found in the work of ASD children interacting with a
robot as an agent, many challenges remained [
As the use of computers and mobile applications becomes a necessity today, and with
the rise of digital healthcare for all, including elderly patients, elderly users often
struggle with the use of these applications. One major challenge in assisting elderly users to
overcome the technology gap is their lack of motivation and engagement in performing
tasks related to the use of these applications [
Several examples of gamification exist in the literature, where gamification was
employed to engage elderly users to use technology and to be aware of its risks. For
example, a game was designed to increase elderly users’ motivation in user authentication
when using online applications. The results showed that although gamification was
helpful in promoting authentication awareness among elderly users, the task was highly
time consuming and was thus recommended to be restricted to scenarios where a higher
level of security is required [
Literature review reveals very few examples of using gamification as an inclusive mechanism in RE. In other words, the question of whether gamification may enhance requirements elicitation from special groups, with whom traditional RE methods do not produce the desired results, is yet to be addressed. As a starting point for directing this research, we propose a model that captures and maps the different communication and engagement levels, with regards to the example populations (see Fig.1).
Unlike traditional RE, in which users are capable to communicate their needs, and are often keen to express their opinions and thoughts, in the case of inclusive RE, at least one of the characteristics – communication or engagement – is compromised. In the case of young children, for example, we can expect them to demonstrate high engagement in the process (and even more so, when they are asked to play a game), but the younger the children the more difficult it is to communicate with them and capture a clear and realistic specification of their requirements. In the case of elderly adults, we may assume high communication skills (as long as their cognitive condition is not impaired), but often low engagement, due to the reluctance to use technology, as discussed above. RE for users on the spectrum of autism presents challenges on both dimensions: communication and engagement. We propose a research agenda that can guide research works aiming to investigate and improve requirements elicitation for special populations. Specifically, we propose to address the following research questions: How can gamification be used for improving requirements elicitation from populations with (1) communication barriers? (2) engagement barriers? (3) with both, communication and engagement, barriers?
In order to address these questions, we propose to construct a framework of models, where each model refers to various gamification techniques, with regard to different special user groups. Several combinations of gamification techniques should be evaluated for each group, trying to determine which gamification techniques can enhance the RE process, facilitating and promoting user communication, engagement, or both.