Could the utilization of Empathy Maps and Personas enhance the requirement elicitation process

Abstract

There is a growing interest in the use of Design Thinking (DT) to enrich requirements elicitation processes. We carried out a quasi-experiment to compare the Effectiveness of Brainstorming sessions in terms of the number of ideas of requirements generated, and the Identified Stakeholders, complementing the Brainstorming sessions with two of the most widely used DT techniques: Empathy Maps and Personas. Therefore, we consider three treatments: Personas + Brainstorming, Empathy Maps + Brainstorming, and Brainstorming alone (control group). The quasi-experiment was carried out with 74 students enrolled in the Bachelor of Computer Engineering course at the Universitat Politècnica de València in 2021. The results reveal a statistically significant effect on Identified Stakeholders when using Empathy Maps. Descriptive analysis also shows an increase in Identified Stakeholders when using Personas, and in the Effectiveness of Brainstorming sessions when used together with Empathy Maps or Personas. There is also a variation in the type of ideas, with the number of functional ideas being higher, and that of non-functional ideas being lower when Empathy Maps are used. These results seem to indicate that Brainstorming sessions are improved when complemented with Empathy Maps or Personas techniques. Nonetheless, we still lack enough evidence to recommend either Personas or Empathy Maps, necessitating further validation.