Multimedia Requirements Engineering

Name of Workshop

Third International Workshop on

Multimedia and Enjoyable Requirements Engineering (MERE'08) —

Beyond Mere Descriptions and with More Fun and Games

Tuesday, September 9th, 2008

Barcelona, Catalunya, Spain

Printable Call for Papers (pdf/plain text)

Program

The workshop proceedings are online in the Computer Society Digital Library:

http://www2.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/abs/proceedings/mere/2008/3626/00/3626toc.htm.

You can read the abstracts by clicking on the paper title below.

Previous Workshops

1. MeRE'06, colocated with 14th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE'06) http://wwwbruegge.in.tum.de/MeRE/RE06/
2. MeRE'07.de, colocated with the Conference on Software Engineering, Hamburg, Germany (SE 2007) http://wwwbruegge.in.tum.de/MeRE/SE07/

Abstract

High-quality requirements are an important precondition for successful software development. Novel ways to produce high-quality requirements that add value to the entire software development lifecycle are needed. One approach is to encourage a more playful and enjoyable creative process for requirements engineering, both in the training and conduct of its practices, thus increasing the intrinsic motivation for doing a good job. Another approach is to reflect the creativity and vision of requirements engineers in the resulting specifications, transporting ideas on many levels of abstraction and addressing a diverse audience.

We believe that more support is needed in these 'softer' and more 'representational' areas of requirements engineering. This workshop shall provide an opportunity to exchange new and innovative ideas on how to use multimedia, games, or other emerging concepts to make requirements engineering activities and artifacts more engaging and effective. The workshop will build upon the discussions in earlier, well-received Workshops on Multimedia Requirements Engineering (MeRE'06 and MeRE'07.de), with a particular focus on exploring the value that can arise from elevating the Enjoyment factor in MERE'08.

Topics

Topics of interest include experience papers, method descriptions, emerging technologies, "best" or "worst" practices, research proposals, evaluations, and comparisons that focus on innovative uses of games, multimedia, or other concepts in requirements engineering practice and training. Typical topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• The role of multimedia or games in pre-requirements and post-requirements specification activities;
• Media languages/techniques for requirements engineering;
• Semiological modeling of requirements;
• Multimedia-based requirements development/analysis/specification;
• Game-oriented requirements development/analysis;
• Approaches to the teaching and training of requirements engineering using games and other multimedia;
• Multimedia techniques and tools to facilitate the evolution of representations.

We explicitly seek proposals from participants who would like to run an interactive or gameplaying session during the workshop, of maximum duration one hour. These sessions may take one of the following forms:

• The demonstration of media-centric techniques or tools in requirements engineering;
• Novel techniques for the interactive exploration of a problem space amongst participants;
• The hands-on use of emerging research techniques or technologies;
• A requirements engineering training game.

Goals

The workshop aims to provide a collaborative session in which lateral thinking about requirements engineering is facilitated. The intention is to explore the value of enjoyment and the role of varying media forms as a way to seed high-quality efforts and results in requirements engineering. It will be a first step towards making requirements engineering more fun and engaging for all stakeholders. The workshop will be used to identify issues, problems and priorities, and to propose recommendations around these dimensions for future requirements research.

Targeted Attendees

• RE researchers working on the development of media or game-based RE tools, techniques, and methods;
• RE researchers and practitioners investigating the deployment of the products of the above RE research in industry;
• RE practitioners with experiences in the selection of RE tools, techniques, and methods for specific projects;
• RE trainers seeking to explore and gain feedback on innovative media or game-based ideas.
• Backgrounds in pedagogy, semiology, game- or communication-design is a plus!
• The workshop will be open to attendees without workshop papers to enable anybody who is interested in gaining new ideas for practice and training to participate in and contribute to the interactive sessions.

Workshop Format

The format of MERE'08 will provide attendees with an opportunity to become familiar with emerging topics and establish a good foundation for discussions about new concepts in requirements engineering. We intend to make the workshop discussion- and interaction-oriented. Brief paper presentations will be used to provoke discussion and participants will break out into small groups for more detailed discussion. These small groups will be organized around common themes or goals identified either from the papers or by the participants during the workshop, and around interactive sessions which will be solicited in the call for papers. At the end of the day, there will be a plenary session where the groups report back to the workshop as a whole on the results of their experiences and discussion. Results may be used as a basis for continued publications and future work.

Paper Evaluation

Position papers (3-5 pages) Short papers, stating the position of the author(s) on any of the topics within the scope of the workshop. For example, position papers could describe experiences with a particular game, tool, technique or method. Position papers will be evaluated based on their potential for generating discussion, and on the originality of the positions expressed.

Proposal papers (3-5 pages) Short papers proposing an interactive session within the scope of the workshop. Proposal papers should describe the objectives for the session, required participants and participation, outline the intended session and the expected outcomes, and clarify the anticipated contribution of the work to requirements engineering. Proposal papers will be evaluated based on their potential for engendering fun amongst the participants, learning by all the parties involved, and on the likely contribution of the effort towards making requirements engineering a more enjoyable experience.

Full papers (8-10 pages) Full papers either describing the experience of comparative evaluation, or reporting on the results of such evaluation. For example, a full paper might describe how a comparative evaluation of media-based RE techniques was performed in practice, either by controlled experiments in the lab or in industrial settings; or it may present the results of running RE games in lab-based experiments, field trials or in practice.

Important Dates

Submission deadline: 4th July 2008

Notification to authors: 28th July 2008

Latest registration of presenters: 7th August 2008

Camera-ready submissions: 8th August 2008

Online Registration Deadline: 29th August 2008

All deadlines are 23:59 Apia, Samoa time.

Program Committee

Len Bass, Carnegie Mellon University, Software Engineering Institute, USA

Bernd Brgge, Technische Universitt Mnchen, Germany

David Callele, University of Saskatchewan, Canada

Jane Cleland-Huang, DePaul University, USA

Paul Grnbacher, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria

Heinrich Humann, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitt Mnchen, Germany

Filippo Lanubile, University of Bari, Italy

Seok-Won Lee, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA

Stephen Morris, City University, UK

Martin Purvis, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

Asarnusch Rashid, FZI Forschungszentrum Informatik Karlsruhe, Germany

Renel Smith, Pace University, USA

Organizers

Oliver Creighton

Siemens AG

Corporate Technology (CT)

Software & Engineering 1 (SE 1) - Development Techniques

Otto-Hahn-Ring 6

D-81730 München, Germany

Oliver Creighton is an Engineer at Siemens AG. Mr. Creighton's responsibilities include consulting, training, and further developing requirements engineering techniques for several operating units within Siemens. He received his diploma in computer science from Technische Universität München in 2001 and his doctoral degree with distinction on a video-based requirements engineering technique in 2006. He is co-author of the book "Open-Source-Software" published in 2004 by Springer-Verlag. His research interests include requirements & development techniques, knowledge modeling, and cinematic communication.

Olly Gotel

Department of Computer Science

Pace University

New York, NY 10038, USA

Olly Gotel is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Pace University in New York City. Olly has been active in the area of Requirements Engineering for over 15 years and holds a PhD from Imperial College, University of London, on Requirements Traceability. Olly has held senior positions within the UK defense industry working on Systems Requirements Engineering, was an initial member of the Centre for Requirements and Foundations at Oxford University, and is on the Steering Committee of the New York City Software Process Improvement Professional Network. She was the co-author of the most influential paper over a 10-year period from the 1st International Conference in Requirements Engineering held in 1994.