Interaction Design, 6th Edition

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

 

Objectives

The main goals of the chapter are to accomplish the following:

• Describe different kinds of requirements.
• Allow you to identify different kinds of requirements.
• Explain additional data gathering techniques and how they may be used to discover requirements.
• Enable you to develop a persona and a scenario.
• Describe use cases as a way of capturing interaction in detail.

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 people who may use the product and their capabilities; how a new product might support people in their daily lives; people's current tasks, goals, and contexts; and constraints on the product's performance. 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 the design is evolving through ...