Requirement-based approach for groupware environments design

Groupware applications have special features that, if they were taken into account from the very beginning, could reasonably improve the quality of the system. Such features concern human–computer–human interactions, i.e. a further step in the human–computer interaction field: communication, collaboration, cooperation and coordination, time, space, and awareness are issues to be considered. This paper presents a novel approach to gather requirements for groupware applications. The proposal is based on a methodology that includes the use of templates to gather the information regarding the different types of requirements. The requirements templates have been extended to include new information to give account of specific features concerning groupware applications. The information gathered is managed in a CASE tool we have developed; then general and specific diagrams are automatic or semi-automatically generated.