Thesis: Aiding Users in Requirements Analysis. Tasks Through Color and Filtering

Aiding Users in Requirements Analysis. Tasks Through Color and Filtering
Senior Honors Thesis by Yesugen Baatartogtokh

Submitted to the Department of Computer Science of Smith College

I completed my senior honors thesis with Prof. Grubb and received highest honors! You can find my thesis here.

This formed the basis for the two RE’23 papers I co-authored with Prof. Grubb and my friend Irene Foster, entitled Visualizations for User-supported State Space Exploration of Requirements Models and An Experiment on the Effects of using Color to Visualize Requirements Analysis Tasks.

Thesis Abstract: Goal-oriented requirements engineering (GORE) allows stakeholders to visualize project scenarios and evaluate their changes over time, which assists them in making early trade-off decisions. However, goal models use formal notation that raises stakeholder concerns about comprehension when evaluating a model’s evolution over time or exploring other potential solutions. This thesis aims to assist users in interpreting the results of automated analysis in answering time-based questions over goal models. To do so, we validate a previous approach that uses color visualization to improve model comprehension, extend it to assist users in exploring alternate scenarios, and implement filtering to allow stakeholders to interpret models and generate their own scenarios.