Requirements Engineering at the Margins: Avoiding Technological Hubris through Alternative Approaches

摘要

Technological hubris occurs when attempts are made to develop technological solutions for marginalized groups. Despite being impoverished, these groups constitute the bulk of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) users. Developers all too often assume these peripheral, marginalized groups have the same needs as people in the core, developed countries and engineer technologies accordingly. Likewise, software engineers typically use the same approaches to elicit requirements and develop technologies for such groups. Both these tactics run the risk of disregarding the true needs of such users by not taking their environment, social order, or influences of either into account. Our position is that developers must reconsider current, widely adopted requirements engineering approaches when developing ICT for marginalized groups. We advocate embracing alternative techniques from the social sciences, here considering two such techniques, namely cultural probes and storytelling. We explore how these techniques can be adapted for software requirements.