Methodological Reflections on Early-Stage Requirement Gathering and Prioritization For Immersive Extended Reality Applications
Abstract
The development of immersive media applications depends on structured processes early on to gather and prioritise user requirements. The processes for complex research projects with multiple partners often take place through internal co-creation sessions with consortium members rather than direct contact with end users. The effectiveness of these initial processes remains crucial as they drive the refinement of the application that will later be tested by end-users, developers and professional stakeholders. This paper examines the methodological challenges that arose during the collection of qualitative requirements and quantitative prioritisation within the PRESENCE project, a European project focusing on developing extended reality (XR) technologies to improve immersive communication. Combining action research with reflective analysis, this paper reveals several key challenges, including (1) difficulties in designing realistic yet visionary personas and aligning stakeholder interpretations, (2) translation issues from open-ended feedback to concrete and actionable requirements, and (3) cognitive overload and reduced engagement during the quantitative prioritisation of a large set of requirements. The research findings fit into general evaluation approaches for immersive media projects and provide recommendations to improve early-stage processes, which will benefit future interaction and storytelling design.
Keywords:
Extended Reality (XR), User and Technical Requirements, Co-creation, Storytelling in XR, Stakeholder Engagement
References
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Victoria Clarke and Virginia Braun. 2017. Thematic analysis. The journal of positive psychology 12, 3 (2017), 297–298.
A Cockburn. 2000. Writing Effective Use Cases Addison. Addison-Wesley Professional (2000).
Alan Cooper. 1999. The inmates are running the asylum. Springer.
John W Creswell and Vicki L Plano Clark. 2017. Designing and conducting mixed methods research. Sage publications.
Peter Dalsgaard. 2017. Instruments of Inquiry: Understanding the Nature and Role of Design Tools. International journal of design 11, 1 (2017), 21–33.
A Griffith and JD Headley. 1997. Using a weighted score model as an aid to selecting procurement methods for small building works. Construction Management & Economics 15, 4 (1997), 341–348.
Philipp Haindl and Reinhold Plösch. 2022. Tailoring stakeholder interests to task-oriented functional requirements. arXiv preprint arXiv:2201.06567 (2022).
Iris Jennes, Markus Friedrich, Jaco Van der Bank, Wendy Van den Broeck, André Ebert, and Michelle Boonen. 2020. The benefits of interdisciplinary scenariobuilding for hybrid radio applications. Telematics and Informatics 54 (2020), 101455.
Seppo Leminen. 2013. Coordination and participation in living lab networks. Technology Innovation Management Review 3, 11 (2013).
Sara Logghe and Dimitri Schuurman. 2017. Action research as a framework to evaluate the operations of a living lab. Technology Innovation Management Review 7, 2 (2017).
Ricardo Matheus, Marijn Janssen, and Devender Maheshwari. 2020. Data science empowering the public: Data-driven dashboards for transparent and accountable decision-making in smart cities. Government Information Quarterly 37, 3 (2020), 101284.
Cristina Palomares, Xavier Franch, Carme Quer, Panagiota Chatzipetrou, Lidia López, and Tony Gorschek. 2021. The state-of-practice in requirements elicitation: an extended interview study at 12 companies. Requirements engineering 26 (2021), 273–299.
John Pruitt and Tamara Adlin. 2010. The persona lifecycle: keeping people in mind throughout product design. Elsevier.
Jaziar Radianti, Tim A Majchrzak, Jennifer Fromm, and Isabell Wohlgenannt. 2020. A systematic review of immersive virtual reality applications for higher education: Design elements, lessons learned, and research agenda. Computers & education 147 (2020), 103778.
Elizabeth B-N Sanders and Pieter Jan Stappers. 2014. Probes, toolkits and prototypes: three approaches to making in codesigning. CoDesign 10, 1 (2014), 5–14.
Vidya Setlur, Michael Correll, Arvind Satyanarayan, and Melanie Tory. 2023. Heuristics for supporting cooperative dashboard design. IEEE transactions on visualization and Computer Graphics 30, 1 (2023), 370–380.
Mel Slater and Maria V Sanchez-Vives. 2016. Enhancing our lives with immersive virtual reality. Frontiers in Robotics and AI 3 (2016), 74.
Marc Steen, Menno Manschot, and Nicole De Koning. 2011. Benefits of co-design in service design projects. International journal of design 5, 2 (2011).
Richard Berntsson Svensson and Richard Torkar. 2024. Not all requirements prioritization criteria are equal at all times: A quantitative analysis. Journal of Systems and Software 209 (2024), 111909.
Arnold POS Vermeeren, Virpi Roto, and Kaisa Väänänen. 2016. Design-inclusive UX research: design as a part of doing user experience research. Behaviour & Information Technology 35, 1 (2016), 21–37.
Karl E Wiegers and Joy Beatty. 2013. Software requirements. Pearson Education.
Chauncey Wilson. 2013. Brainstorming and beyond: a user-centered design method. Newnes.
Published
2025-06-03
How to Cite
BLANCKAERT, Elias; MOSTAJERAN, Fariba; HALLSTRÖM, Louise; JENNES, Iris.
Methodological Reflections on Early-Stage Requirement Gathering and Prioritization For Immersive Extended Reality Applications. In: ACM INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON INTERACTIVE MEDIA EXPERIENCES WORKSHOPS (IMXW), 25. , 2025, Niterói/RJ.
Anais [...].
Porto Alegre: Sociedade Brasileira de Computação,
2025
.
p. 30-36.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5753/imxw.2025.7940.
