User-driven requirements engineering for mobile social software

Abstract

Social software is an important phenomenon which allows end-users to be socially connected whenever and wherever they want. The broad distribution of sophisticated mobile devices strengthens the importance of Mobile Social Software while the number of mobile social applications is increasing. Emerging paradigms such as mobile and service-oriented computing raise challenges for the design and development of social software. This paper discusses a novel approach for requirements engineering which is tailored to the needs of developing Mobile Social Software. We present a mobile requirements elicitation tool allowing social software users to document needs in situ. Furthermore, the tool automatically captures contextual information. We also discuss how the gathered requirements and contextual information can inform future social software development.