Contextual Requirements Discovery for Mobile Social Software

The proposed research is in the field of requirements engineering (RE) and supports requirements discovery for mobile social software - an emerging and exciting phenomenon in today`s software and business world. Social software is currently weaving into the fabric of daily life faster than expected and enables its users to communicate, interact, and share data with other individuals. Two famous examples of social software include Facebook and YouTube. Emerging trends within social software include: the provision of social software for mobile devices, the integration of location-based services into social software, and the integration of social software and service- centric systems. Addressing these trends and the unique nature of mobile social software will require manifold research on mobile social software engineering. The goal of the proposed project is to develop and evaluate a tool-supported requirements discovery method tailored to the needs of mobile social software. It is planned that this method will support analysts in thoroughly understanding the needs of social communities and the patterns of communication and interaction within social networks. Firstly, this method will support on-site analysts in identifying and modelling social context information relevant to early design processes in addition to gathering system requirements. Secondly, the envisioned method will make use of the contextual information to enrich requirements discovery. It is expected that such context- enriched discovery will enable analysts to gather more and more accurate requirements for mobile social software systems. The proposed research will be conducted at the Centre for Human Computer Interaction Design at the City University London, a world-leading institution in the field of requirements engineering and socio-technical systems engineering. The head of Centre, Prof. Neil Maiden is an internationally renowned researcher. He was the Programme Chair for the International Requirements Engineering Conference 2004 and is principal investigator in several projects within the field of RE. The proposed fellowship will allow the applicant to continue his research within RE and will enable him to start a habilitation project to gain a permanent position at an Austrian university or research institution.