Requirements are All You Need: The Final Frontier for End-User Software Engineering

TL;DR

This paper explores the potential of end users owning the entire software development process through natural language and multimedia requirements, leveraging AI to transform end-user software engineering.

Contribution

It proposes a vision for end-user-driven software development using AI, highlighting the need for new research to realize this future.

Findings

AI can enable end users to generate and maintain software from natural requirements

Designing software with end-user requirements can democratize software creation

Future research directions are outlined for realizing end-user software engineering

Abstract

What if end users could own the software development lifecycle from conception to deployment using only requirements expressed in language, images, video or audio? We explore this idea, building on the capabilities that generative Artificial Intelligence brings to software generation and maintenance techniques. How could designing software in this way better serve end users? What are the implications of this process for the future of end-user software engineering and the software development lifecycle? We discuss the research needed to bridge the gap between where we are today and these imagined systems of the future.