Integrating ethnography into the requirements engineering process

Author

Sommerville, Ian ; Rodden, Tom ; Sawyer, Pete ; Bentley, Richard ; Twidale, Michael

Author_Institution

Dept. of Comput., Lancaster Univ., UK

fYear

1993

fDate

4-6 Jan 1993

Firstpage

165

Lastpage

173

Abstract

Experiences from an interdisciplinary project involving software engineers and sociologists are reported. The project is concerned with discovering the requirements of a user interface to a flight database which is used to provide real-time information to air-traffic controllers. The sociologists are conducting an ethnographic analysis of the activity of air-traffic control, and this is being used for the development of a prototype system. An overview of the project is given, the contribution of sociologists to requirements engineering is discussed, and tool support which will allow ethnographic observations to be integrated into the requirements engineering process is suggested

Keywords

air traffic computer control; database management systems; human factors; real-time systems; social aspects of automation; software engineering; systems analysis; user interfaces; air-traffic controllers; ethnographic analysis; ethnography; flight database; interdisciplinary project; prototype system; real-time information; requirements engineering process; sociologists; software engineers; tool support; user interface; Availability; Control systems; Databases; Design engineering; Information analysis; Knowledge acquisition; Manuals; Prototypes; Psychology; Software systems;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Requirements Engineering, 1993., Proceedings of IEEE International Symposium on

Conference_Location

San Diego, CA

Print_ISBN

0-8186-3120-1

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ISRE.1993.324821

Filename

324821