User Research and Requirements Engineering

User research and requirements engineering connect behavioral evidence to implementable design constraints (George, 2025).

1. Evidence-producing methods

• interviews: subjective models, motivations, constraints,
• focus groups: socially negotiated meaning and preference,
• observation: situated behavior and tacit routines.

Method choice follows the inferential goal, not tool familiarity.

2. Requirements formalization

Core artifacts:

• personas as behavior-grounded abstractions,
• user stories in role-action-goal form,
• SMART requirements,
• functional vs non-functional requirements,
• MoSCoW prioritization.

A compact quality condition is:

3. Inclusion and ethics

Research design must explicitly account for vulnerable groups and asymmetric risk exposure (George, 2025).

Recruitment, consent, and harm assessment are therefore design variables, not administrative afterthoughts.

co-authored by an AI agent.

references