Designing End-user Personas for Explainability Requirements using Mixed Methods Research

Research output: Chapter in book/report/conference proceedingConference contributionResearchpeer review

View graph of relations

Details

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication2023 IEEE 31st International Requirements Engineering Conference Workshops (REW)
EditorsKurt Schneider, Fabiano Dalpiaz, Jennifer Horkoff
Pages129-135
Number of pages7
ISBN (electronic)979-8-3503-2691-8
Publication statusPublished - 4 Sept 2023

Publication series

NameKey-title IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference Workshops
ISSN (Print)2770-6826
ISSN (electronic)2770-6834

Abstract

With software systems becoming increasingly complex and opaque, explainability has become an emerging software quality aspect of our time. Raising explainability requirements for a large crowd of stakeholders can be a difficult task. At this point, it is unclear what factors have an impact on the subjective need for explanations. As researchers, we do not know whether end-users' explainability needs are specific for each system or if there are user types that have more generalized needs. Designing stakeholder personas has proven to be an effective method to elicit and communicate requirements. Indeed, personas have been established in both research and in applied scenarios such as software projects. Past work has created end-user personas for explainability requirements in the context of a specific system. The goal of this work is to design personas that do not only apply to explainability requirements of a certain software, but to explainability requirements in general. To this end, we conduct a mixed-methods user study consisting of an online survey and an interview study. Based on insights of 70 participants from the online survey, 10 of which were also interviewed, we design four end-user personas for general explainability requirements. We also validate the personas by doing use case walkthroughs with our participants. Our results indicate that it is possible to design end-user personas for general explainability requirements. These personas might be used in early software development stages to estimate end-users explainability needs before more specific requirements can be raised.

Keywords

    Explainability, Requirements Engineering, CrowdRE, Mixed Methods Research, Personas

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Cite this

Designing End-user Personas for Explainability Requirements using Mixed Methods Research. / Droste, Jakob Richard Christian; Deters, Hannah Luca; Puglisi, Joshua et al.
2023 IEEE 31st International Requirements Engineering Conference Workshops (REW). ed. / Kurt Schneider; Fabiano Dalpiaz; Jennifer Horkoff. 2023. p. 129-135 (Key-title IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference Workshops ).

Research output: Chapter in book/report/conference proceedingConference contributionResearchpeer review

Droste, JRC, Deters, HL, Puglisi, J & Schneider, K 2023, Designing End-user Personas for Explainability Requirements using Mixed Methods Research. in K Schneider, F Dalpiaz & J Horkoff (eds), 2023 IEEE 31st International Requirements Engineering Conference Workshops (REW). Key-title IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference Workshops , pp. 129-135. https://doi.org/10.1109/REW57809.2023.00028
Droste, J. R. C., Deters, H. L., Puglisi, J., & Schneider, K. (2023). Designing End-user Personas for Explainability Requirements using Mixed Methods Research. In K. Schneider, F. Dalpiaz, & J. Horkoff (Eds.), 2023 IEEE 31st International Requirements Engineering Conference Workshops (REW) (pp. 129-135). (Key-title IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference Workshops ). https://doi.org/10.1109/REW57809.2023.00028
Droste JRC, Deters HL, Puglisi J, Schneider K. Designing End-user Personas for Explainability Requirements using Mixed Methods Research. In Schneider K, Dalpiaz F, Horkoff J, editors, 2023 IEEE 31st International Requirements Engineering Conference Workshops (REW). 2023. p. 129-135. (Key-title IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference Workshops ). doi: 10.1109/REW57809.2023.00028
Droste, Jakob Richard Christian ; Deters, Hannah Luca ; Puglisi, Joshua et al. / Designing End-user Personas for Explainability Requirements using Mixed Methods Research. 2023 IEEE 31st International Requirements Engineering Conference Workshops (REW). editor / Kurt Schneider ; Fabiano Dalpiaz ; Jennifer Horkoff. 2023. pp. 129-135 (Key-title IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference Workshops ).
Download
@inproceedings{936d69757e44482391da8f4009be9ad7,
title = "Designing End-user Personas for Explainability Requirements using Mixed Methods Research",
abstract = "With software systems becoming increasingly complex and opaque, explainability has become an emerging software quality aspect of our time. Raising explainability requirements for a large crowd of stakeholders can be a difficult task. At this point, it is unclear what factors have an impact on the subjective need for explanations. As researchers, we do not know whether end-users' explainability needs are specific for each system or if there are user types that have more generalized needs. Designing stakeholder personas has proven to be an effective method to elicit and communicate requirements. Indeed, personas have been established in both research and in applied scenarios such as software projects. Past work has created end-user personas for explainability requirements in the context of a specific system. The goal of this work is to design personas that do not only apply to explainability requirements of a certain software, but to explainability requirements in general. To this end, we conduct a mixed-methods user study consisting of an online survey and an interview study. Based on insights of 70 participants from the online survey, 10 of which were also interviewed, we design four end-user personas for general explainability requirements. We also validate the personas by doing use case walkthroughs with our participants. Our results indicate that it is possible to design end-user personas for general explainability requirements. These personas might be used in early software development stages to estimate end-users explainability needs before more specific requirements can be raised.",
keywords = "Explainability, Requirements Engineering, CrowdRE, Mixed Methods Research, Personas",
author = "Droste, {Jakob Richard Christian} and Deters, {Hannah Luca} and Joshua Puglisi and Kurt Schneider",
note = "This work was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemein- schaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Grant No.: 470146331, project softXplain (2022-2025).",
year = "2023",
month = sep,
day = "4",
doi = "10.1109/REW57809.2023.00028",
language = "English",
isbn = "979-8-3503-2692-5",
series = "Key-title IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference Workshops ",
pages = "129--135",
editor = "Kurt Schneider and Fabiano Dalpiaz and Jennifer Horkoff",
booktitle = "2023 IEEE 31st International Requirements Engineering Conference Workshops (REW)",

}

Download

TY - GEN

T1 - Designing End-user Personas for Explainability Requirements using Mixed Methods Research

AU - Droste, Jakob Richard Christian

AU - Deters, Hannah Luca

AU - Puglisi, Joshua

AU - Schneider, Kurt

N1 - This work was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemein- schaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Grant No.: 470146331, project softXplain (2022-2025).

PY - 2023/9/4

Y1 - 2023/9/4

N2 - With software systems becoming increasingly complex and opaque, explainability has become an emerging software quality aspect of our time. Raising explainability requirements for a large crowd of stakeholders can be a difficult task. At this point, it is unclear what factors have an impact on the subjective need for explanations. As researchers, we do not know whether end-users' explainability needs are specific for each system or if there are user types that have more generalized needs. Designing stakeholder personas has proven to be an effective method to elicit and communicate requirements. Indeed, personas have been established in both research and in applied scenarios such as software projects. Past work has created end-user personas for explainability requirements in the context of a specific system. The goal of this work is to design personas that do not only apply to explainability requirements of a certain software, but to explainability requirements in general. To this end, we conduct a mixed-methods user study consisting of an online survey and an interview study. Based on insights of 70 participants from the online survey, 10 of which were also interviewed, we design four end-user personas for general explainability requirements. We also validate the personas by doing use case walkthroughs with our participants. Our results indicate that it is possible to design end-user personas for general explainability requirements. These personas might be used in early software development stages to estimate end-users explainability needs before more specific requirements can be raised.

AB - With software systems becoming increasingly complex and opaque, explainability has become an emerging software quality aspect of our time. Raising explainability requirements for a large crowd of stakeholders can be a difficult task. At this point, it is unclear what factors have an impact on the subjective need for explanations. As researchers, we do not know whether end-users' explainability needs are specific for each system or if there are user types that have more generalized needs. Designing stakeholder personas has proven to be an effective method to elicit and communicate requirements. Indeed, personas have been established in both research and in applied scenarios such as software projects. Past work has created end-user personas for explainability requirements in the context of a specific system. The goal of this work is to design personas that do not only apply to explainability requirements of a certain software, but to explainability requirements in general. To this end, we conduct a mixed-methods user study consisting of an online survey and an interview study. Based on insights of 70 participants from the online survey, 10 of which were also interviewed, we design four end-user personas for general explainability requirements. We also validate the personas by doing use case walkthroughs with our participants. Our results indicate that it is possible to design end-user personas for general explainability requirements. These personas might be used in early software development stages to estimate end-users explainability needs before more specific requirements can be raised.

KW - Explainability

KW - Requirements Engineering

KW - CrowdRE

KW - Mixed Methods Research

KW - Personas

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85174689881&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1109/REW57809.2023.00028

DO - 10.1109/REW57809.2023.00028

M3 - Conference contribution

SN - 979-8-3503-2692-5

T3 - Key-title IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference Workshops

SP - 129

EP - 135

BT - 2023 IEEE 31st International Requirements Engineering Conference Workshops (REW)

A2 - Schneider, Kurt

A2 - Dalpiaz, Fabiano

A2 - Horkoff, Jennifer

ER -

By the same author(s)