Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/224629

Title

Understanding socially oriented roles and goals through motivational modelling

Author(s)

Miller, Tim;  Pedell, Sonja;  Sterling, Leon;  Vetere, Frank;  Howard, Steve

Abstract

Technology has the potential to transform our home life, but only if it addresses the needs of its users. Understanding and modelling social needs is a challenge. For example, how do we understand, model, and then evaluate a system that must support needs such as 'being fun'? In this paper, we define a systematic and repeatable process and method for understanding the roles and goals within a social domain for the purpose of informing technology design. We use the case study of building technology that supports meaningful interactions between grandparents and grandchildren separated by distance. Rather than attempt to define the roles of grandparents and grandchildren, and their associated goals, we study the roles and goals of activities in which grandparents and grandchildren typically engage, such as storytelling and gifting, and define role and goals models from the resulting data. The data obtained from the study of these activities provides a form of validation of the models. From these, we gain a better understanding of this complex social relationship, and how software systems can be built to support it. The models that emerge during the process are useful boundary objects, allowing knowledge to be shared across and between the disparate stakeholder communities, including end users, software engineers, and field researchers, and serve as inputs to the design process.

Publication type

Journal article

Research centre

Swinburne University of Technology. Faculty of Design

Research centre

Swinburne University of Technology. Faculty of Information and Communication Technologies

Source

Journal of Systems and Software: incorporating selected papers from the 2011 Joint Working IEEE/IFIP Conference on Software Architecture (WICSA 2011), Boulder, Colorado, United States, 20-24 June 2011, Vol. 85, no. 9 (Sep 2012), pp. 2160-2170

Publication year

2012

FOR Code(s)

0803 Computer Software;  0806 Information Systems

Keyword(s)

Ethnography;  Requirements engineering;  Socially oriented requirements

Publisher

Elsevier

ISSN

0164-1212

Publisher URL

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2012.04.049

Copyright

Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. The accepted manuscript will be reproduced 24 months after publication (September 2014) in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher.

Research Projects

Approved socially oriented requirements engineering: software engineering meets ethnography, Australian Research Council grant number DP0880810

Peer reviewed