Chapter 11DISCOVERING REQUIREMENTS
- 11.1 Introduction
- 11.2 What, How, and Why?
- 11.3 What Are Requirements?
- 11.4 Data Gathering for Requirements
- 11.5 Bringing Requirements to Life: Personas and Scenarios
- 11.6 Capturing Interaction with Use Cases
11.1 Introduction
Discovering requirements focuses on exploring the problem space and defining what will be developed. In the case of interaction design, this includes: understanding the target users and their capabilities; how a new product might support users in their daily lives; users' current tasks, goals, and contexts; constraints on the product's performance; and so on. This understanding forms the basis of the product's requirements and underpins design and construction.
It may seem artificial to distinguish between requirements, design, and evaluation activities because they are so closely related, especially in an iterative development cycle like the one used for interaction design. In practice, they are all intertwined, with some design taking place while requirements are being discovered and ...