A comparison of questionnaire-based and GUI-based requirements gathering

Software development includes gathering information about tasks, work practices and design options from users. Traditionally requirements gathering takes two forms. Interviews and participatory design (PD) practices gather rich information about the task and the domain but require face-to-face communication between the software engineers and the users. When such communication is not possible, traditional software engineering frequently relies on questionnaires and other paper-based methods. Unfortunately, questionnaires often fail to capture implicit aspects of user tasks that may be identified through one-on-one interactions. This project investigates a method of gathering requirements whereby users, working independently of software engineers, construct rough interfaces augmented with textual argumentation. Our initial study has compared the use of GRC (Graphical Requirements Collector) with questionnaire-based requirements gathering.