Catalog of Invisibility Requirements for UbiComp and IoT Applications

Abstract

A new set of Non-Functional Requirements (NFRs) have appeared with the advent of Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp) and more recently Internet of Things (IoT). Invisibility is one of these NFRs that means the ability to hide technology from users. Although invisibility is long seen as an essential characteristic for achieving the goals of UbiComp, it has not been cataloged regarding its subcharacteristics and solutions, making its design and requirements specification in such applications a challenging task. Considering the Softgoal Interdependency Graph (SIG), which is a well-known format to catalog NFRs, this work aims at capturing subcharacteristics and solutions for Invisibility and cataloging them in a SIG. Since there is no systematic approach on how to build SIGs, we also propose to systematize the definition of Invisibility SIG using the following well-defined research methods: snowballing, database search, grounded theory and questionnaires. As a result, we got an Invisibility SIG composed of two main subcharacteristics, twelve sub-subcharacteristics, ten general solutions and fifty-six specific solutions. This organized body of knowledge is useful for supporting software engineers to specify requirements and practical solutions for UbiComp and IoT applications. Furthermore, the proposed methodology used to capture and catalog requirements in a SIG can be reused for other NFRs.