Abstract
In designing most software applications, much effort is placed upon the functional goals, making a software system useful. However, the failure to consider emotional goals, which make a software system pleasurable to use, can result in disappointment and system rejection even if utilitarian goals are well implemented. Although several studies have emphasised the importance of people’s emotional goals in developing software, there is little advice on how to address these goals in the software system development process. This paper bridges the gap between emotional goals elicitation and the software system design process by proposing a novel technique entitled the Emotional Goal Systematic Analysis Technique (EG-SAT) to systematically analyse people’s emotional goals in cooperation with functional and quality goals. EG-SAT allows in-depth analysis of emotional goals to build a software system and provides a visual notation for representing the analysis, facilitating communication and documentation. EG-SAT provides traceability of emotional goals in system design by connecting the emotional goals to functional and quality goals. To demonstrate the method in use, a two-part evaluation is conducted. First, EG-SAT is used to analyse the emotional goals of potential users of a mobile learning application that provides information about low carbon living for tradespeople and professionals in the building industry in Australia. The results of using EG-SAT in this case study are compared with a professionally developed baseline. Second, we ran a semi-controlled experiment in which 12 participants were asked to apply EG-SAT and another technique to our case study. The outcomes show that EG-SAT helped participants analyse emotional goals and gain valuable insights about the functional and non-functional goals for addressing people’s emotional goals. The key novelty of the EG-SAT is in proposing an easy to learn and easy to use technique that helps system analysts gain insights on how to address people’s emotional goals. Furthermore, the EG-SAT enables system analysts to convert emotional goals to traditional functional and non-functional goals that existing software engineering methodologies can analyse without demanding excessive effort.
Highlights
4.2.4.1 Completeness and Correctness As Table 4 shows, from the domain experts point of view, participants found more non-repetitive and relevant ways to address the emotional goals using the EG-SAT compared with other techniques
We acknowledge that achieving more non-repetitive and relevant functional and quality goals is not a benchmark for measuring the proposed method completeness and correctness, the uniqueness and relevance of achieved functional and quality goals support the claim that the EG-SAT has succeeded to provide the middle-level creativity for analyzing people’s emotional goals and higher capability to generate novel correct and complete ideas for addressing the emotional goals
In terms of effectiveness metrics, the results show that participants found more non-repetitive, relevant and consistent ways to address the emotional goals using the EGSAT compared with other techniques
Summary
“Interaction with technology is as much about what people feel as it is about what people do.” McCarthy and Wright (2007), p. 9. We argue that efforts may not be led to action without a proper method for analyzing people’s emotional goals to software specifications For this reason, a technique for analyzing emotional goals and converting them to traditional functional and non-functional goals that existing software engineering methodologies can analyze is necessary for system prototyping, verification, validation, and final implementation. A technique for analyzing emotional goals and converting them to traditional functional and non-functional goals that existing software engineering methodologies can analyze is necessary for system prototyping, verification, validation, and final implementation In this process, a key question for considering people’s emotional goals in system design activities is: How can system analysts systematically realize the design capabilities required to address users emotional goals?. The last two sections of this paper are dedicated to discussion and conclusion
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