Knowns and Unknowns: An Experience Report on Discovering Tacit Knowledge of Maritime Surveyors

TL;DR

This paper reports on observational techniques in maritime surveyor requirements gathering, highlighting their costs and benefits, and emphasizing their importance in uncovering critical user insights.

Contribution

It provides an empirical experience report demonstrating the value of observational methods despite their costs in a maritime domain.

Findings

Observational studies reveal essential user insights

Costly but valuable for understanding user concerns

Both developers and users benefit from observational data

Abstract

Context: Requirements elicitation is an essential activity to ensure that systems provide the necessary functionality to users, and that they are fit for purpose. In addition to traditional `reductionist' techniques, the use of observations and ethnography-style techniques have been proposed to identify requirements. Research Problem: One frequently heard issue with observational techniques is that they are costly to use, as developers would lose considerable time to partake, and also depend on luck in identifying requirements. Very few experience reports exist to evaluate observational techniques in practice. Results: In this experience report, we draw on several data sources, covering insights from both developers and users. The data were collected through 9 interviews with users and developers, and over 80 hours of observation of prospective users in the maritime domain. We capture `knowns' and `unknowns' from both developers and users, and highlight the importance of observational studies. Contribution: While observational techniques are costly to use, we conclude that essential information is uncovered, which is key for developers to understand system users and their concerns.