A Tool Proposal for Recommending Design Thinking Techniques in Software Development

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5753/jserd.2021.1931

Keywords:

Design Thinking, Technique, Recommendation System, Collaborative Tool, Design Science Research

Abstract

Design Thinking (DT) has been incorporated into software processes by teams from startups to large companies, used in problem exploration fostering innovative solutions, and integrated into agile methods to satisfy the real stakeholders’ needs. DT places the customer needs up-front and helps to empathize with users, examining their behaviors, and producing outcomes focused on users’ demand. A set of techniques, like personas and user journey, can be used to support this human-centered approach. Selecting which technique to use might be challenging since factors such as the application scenario, stakeholder engagement level and previous knowledge of the problem-to-be-solved may vary from case to case. In our previous work we presented a DT session conducted to better understand the need for a recommendation tool, followed by a requirements elicitation activity in which we defined how the tool should work, and an early evaluation of the initial tool low-fidelity prototypes. Inspired by the Design Science Research method, in this article we extend our previous work by furthering what we performed in the tool’s definition process. We included in this work a requirements refining activity through high-level fidelity prototypes, and a requirements validation activity through a questionnaire-based feedback collection with professionals who have experience on the use of DT in software development. Our results show that our proposal offers an useful and easy to use tool to recommend DT techniques with the potential to support those professionals who apply DT in requirements engineering by suggesting techniques that are the best fit to the declared context.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Albaum, G. (1997). The Likert Scale Revisited. Market Research Society Journal, 39(2):1–21.

Brenner, W., Uebernickel, F., and Abrell, T. (2016). Design Thinking as Mindset, Process, and Toolbox. In Design Thinking for Innovation, pages 3–21. Springer, 1 edition.

Brown, T. (2008). Design Thinking. Harvard Business Review, 86:84–95.

Crispim, R. and Benitti, F. (2020). Improving the Selection of Requirements Elicitation Techniques: a Faceted Guide. In Proc. of the Workshop on Requirements Engineering, pages 1–14, São José dos Campos, Brazil. PUC-RIO.

Davis, F. D. (1989). Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use, and User Acceptance of Information Technology. MIS Quarterly, 13(3):319–340.

Dias, G. A., Silva, P. M. d., Delfino Jr., J. B., and Almeida, J. R. d. (2011). Technology Acceptance Model (TAM): Avaliando a Aceitação Tecnológica do Open Journal Systems (OJS). Informação & Sociedade: Estudos, 21(2).

Dobrigkeit, F. and de Paula, D. (2019). Design Thinking in Practice: Understanding Manifestations of Design Thinking in Software Engineering. In Proceedings of the European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering, page 1059–1069, Tallinn, Estonia. ACM.

Docherty, C. (2017). Perspectives on Design Thinking for Social Innovation. Design Journal, 20(6):719–724.

Ferreira, B., Silva, W., Oliveira, E., and Conte, T. (2015). Designing Personas with Empathy Map. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering, number May, pages 501–505, Pittsburgh, USA. Seke.

Figma (2015). Figma prototyping Tool. [Link]. Last checked on Nov 20, 2020.

Hehn, J., Mendez, D., Uebernickel, F., Brenner, W., and Broy, M. (2020). On Integrating Design Thinking for Human-Centered Requirements Engineering. IEEE Software, 37(2):25–31.

Hehn, J. and Uebernickel, F. (2018). The Use of Design Thinking for Requirements Engineering: An Ongoing Case Study in the Field of Innovative Software-Intensive Systems. In Proceedings of the International Requirements Engineering Conference, pages 400–405, Banff, Canada. IEEE.

Hehn, J., Uebernickel, F., and Fernández, D. M. (2018). DT4RE: Design Thinking for Requirements Engineering: A Tutorial on Human-Centered and Structured Requirements Elicitation. In Proceedings of International Requirements Engineering Conference, pages 504–505, Alberta, Canada. IEEE.

Hevner, A. R. (2007). A Three Cycle View of Design Science Research. Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems, 19(2):87–92.

Hiremath, M. and Sathiyam, V. (2013). Fast Train to DT: a Practical Guide to Coach Design Thinking in Software Industry. In Proceedings of the International Federation for Information Processing, pages 780–787, Cape Town, South Africa. Springer.

IDEO (2020). IDEO Design Kit. [Link]. Last checked on Nov 20, 2020.

Johansson-Sköldberg, U., Woodilla, J., and Çetinkaya, M. (2013). Design Thinking: Past, Present and Possible Futures. Creativity and Innovation Management, 22(2):121–146.

Laitenberger, O. and Dreyer, H. M. (1998). Evaluating the Usefulness and the Ease of Use of a Web-Based Inspection Data Collection Tool. In Proc. of the Int’l Software Metrics Symposium, pages 122–131, Bethesda, USA. IEEE.

Lewrick, M., Link, P., and Leifer, L. (2020). The design thinking toolbox: A guide to mastering the most popular and valuable innovation methods. John Wiley & Sons.

Liedtka, J. (2015). Perspective: Linking Design Thinking With Innovation Outcomes through Cognitive Bias Reduction. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 32(6):925–938.

Lindberg, T., Meinel, C., and Wagner, R. (2011). Design Thinking: A Fruitful Concept for IT Development?, volume 1, pages 3–18. Springer, Heidelberg, Germany.

Lucena, P., Braz, A., Chicoria, A., and Tizzei, L. (2016). IBM Design Thinking Software Development Framework. In Proceedings of the Brazilian Workshop on Agile Methods, pages 98–109, Curitiba, Brazil. Springer.

Luma, I. (2012). Innovating for People: Handbook of Human-Centered Design Methods, volume 1. LUMA Institute, LLC.

Parizi, R. and Marczak, S. (2020). A Context-based Recommendation Model for Design Thinking: Techniques Selection in Software Development. In Proc. of the Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering, pages 114–122, Natal, Brazil. SBC.

Parizi, R., Moreira, M., Couto, I., Marczak, S., and Conte, T. (2020a). A Design Thinking Techniques Recommendation Tool: An Initial and On-Going Proposal. In Proc. of the Brazilian Symposium on Software Quality, São Luis, Brazil. ACM.

Parizi, R., Moreira da Silva, M., de Souza Couto, I., Pavin Trindade, K., Plautz, M., Marczak, S., Conte, T., and Candello, H. (2020b). Design Thinking in Software Requirements: What Techniques to Use? A Proposal for a Recommendation Tool. In Proceedings of the IberoAmerican Conference-American on Software-American Engineering, page 14, Curitiba, Brazil. Curran Associates.

Parizi, R., Prestes, M., Marczak, S., and Conte, T. (2022). How has Design Thinking being Used and Integrated into Software Development Activities? A Systematic Mapping. Journal of Systems and Software, 187:1–27.

Prestes, M. (2020). Estudo Exploratório sobre Design Thinking no Desenvolvimento de Software. Master’s thesis, Escola Politécnica, PUCRS. Porto Alegre, Brazil.

Prestes, M., Parizi, R., Marczak, S., and Conte, T. (2020). On the Use of Design Thinking: A Survey of the Brazilian Agile Software Development Community. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Agile Software Development, pages 73–86, Copenhagen, Denmark. Springer.

Przybilla, L., Schreieck, M., Klinker, K., Pflügler, C., Wiesche, M., and Krcmar, H. (2018). Combining Design Thinking and Agile Development to Master Highly Innovative IT Projects. Proceedings of the Project Management and Procedure Models conference, pages 113–124.

Quant-UX (2020). QuantUX prototyping Tool. [Link]. Last checked on Nov 20, 2020.

Rozante de Paula, T., Santana Amancio, T., and Nonato Flores, J. A. (2020). Design thinking in industry. IEEE Software, 37(2):49–51.

Runeson, P., Engström, E., and Storey, M.-A. (2020). The Design Science Paradigm as a Frame for Empirical Software Engineering, pages 127–147. Springer.

Seidel, V. P. and Fixson, S. K. (2013). Adopting Design Thinking in Novice Multidisciplinary Teams: The Application and Limits of Design Methods and Reflexive Practices. Journal of Product Innov. Management, 30:19–33.

Souza, A. F., Ferreira, B., Valentim, N. M. C., Correa, L., Marczak, S., and Conte, T. (2020). Supporting the Teaching of Design Thinking Techniques for Requirements Elicitation Through a Recommendation Tool. IET Software, 14(6):693–701.

Souza, A. F. B. d., Ferreira, B. M., and Conte, T. (2017). Applying Design Thinking in Software Engineering: A Systematic Mapping. In Proc. of the Ibero-American Conference on Software Engineering, pages 1–14, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Curran Associates.

Stanford d.School (2019). Design Thinking - Bootcamp Bootleg. [Link]. Last checked on Nov 20, 2020.

Tonkinwise, C. (2011). A Taste for Practices: Unrepressing Style in Design Thinking. Design Studies, 32(6):533–545. Interpreting Design Thinking.

Vianna, M. (2012). Design Thinking: Business Inovation. MJV Technology & Innovation.

Wieringa, R. (2014). Design Science Methodology for Information Systems and Software Engineering. Springer.

Downloads

Published

2022-03-04

How to Cite

Parizi, R., Moreira, M., Couto, I., Marczak, S., & Conte, T. (2022). A Tool Proposal for Recommending Design Thinking Techniques in Software Development. Journal of Software Engineering Research and Development, 10, 3:1 – 3:15. https://doi.org/10.5753/jserd.2021.1931

Issue

Section

Software Article