The Role of Working Memory in Eliciting Users Cognitive Requirements

Abstract

Requirements elicitation is the initial phase of requirements engineering concerned with gathering users' needs, which makes it a major determinant of the outcome of the entire software development process. Software users have psychological concerns which influence requirements elicitation and a knowledge of these cognitive processes will enable developers empathize with users during requirements elicitation and enable them capture their cognitive needs which are formulated as mental models. This research conducted experiments to determine the role of working memory in the elicitation of users' cognitive requirements. Findings showed that the best place to capture users' implicit needs is from the working memory when a users' mind is formulating mental models along the line of the solution to the problem. This will improve the requirements engineering process, better project outcomes and more satisfied users.