User Needs Analysis and requirements engineering: Theory and practice

Several comprehensive User Centred Design methodologies have been published in the last decade, but while they all focus on users, they disagree on exactly what activities should take place during the User Needs Analysis, what the end products of a User Needs Analysis should cover, how User Needs Analysis findings should be presented, and how these should be documented and communicated. This paper highlights issues in different stages of the User Needs Analysis that appear to cause considerable confusion among researchers and practitioners. It is our hope that the User-Centred Design community may begin to address these issues systematically. A case study is presented reporting a User Needs Analysis methodology and process as well as the user interface design of an application supporting communication among first responders in a major disaster. It illustrates some of the differences between the User-Centred Design and the Requirements Engineering communities and shows how and where User-Centred Design and Requirements Engineering methodologies should be integrated, or at least aligned, to avoid some of the problems practitioners face during the User Needs Analysis.