Luca Sabatucci Ahab’s Leg - Exploring the Issues of Communicating Semi-Formal Requirements to the Final Users Hammamet, 12/06/2010 – CAISE’10

1. Exploring the Issues of Communicating
Semi-Formal Requirements to the Final Users
ChiaraLeonardi, Luca Sabatucci, Angelo Susi, Massimo Zancanaro
Luca Sabatucci – Hammamet, 12/06/2010 – CAISE’10

2.  From users to requirements and back again
 Presenting requirements to final users
 The Ahab’s Leg
 Lesson learnt

3.  Objective:
◦ Ambient Aware Assistance
◦ High-developed smart environment for nursing
home
 Multidisciplinary nature:
◦ software engineers, sociologists, analysts
◦ end-users involved in the process
 Technology:
◦ Software + Hardware
◦ Network of distributed sensors
 Non Functional Requirements:
◦ Privacy
◦ Acceptance

5. 3 representative sites in Trento (from 20 to 200 guests)
4 interviews to managers, 18 interviews to caregivers
Dimensions:
users
services
environment
procedures
resources
problems
needs

7. 5 personas
1 caregivers
1 nurse
3 guests
6 activity scenarios
Maria is in RSA since 3 months and she never tried to escape.
After lunch, she leaves the group and decides to go back her
room, in the second floor. She goes up the stairs and she falls
down.
Maria is still conscious and asks for caregivers help. Sabrina, full
time OSS, hears Maria’s call and reaches her in the stairs…

8. 1 devil’s advocate session
5 macro-services:
localization, tracking,
identity recognition,
behavior recognition,
coordination,
reporting.
Maria is leaving the restoration room, and the sensor
on the door sends a signal to Sabrina’s PDA that alerts
with a vibration. Sabrina knows that a vibration means
78 high-level Maria is moving out from the room, but she cannot
functional follow her in that moment because she must oversee
the room.
requirements [whether Maria leaves the room with other guests or
with a caregiver, the alarm would not be sent]
Maria is going upstairs in order to reach her private
79 non- room but when she is on the staircase, she falls.
The camera identifies the event and sends warning
functional signals to caregivers' PDA.
requirements Sabrina's PDA displays an unknown person is fallen
down in the staircase between second and third
floors….

10. The Ahab’s Leg

11. 1956 Ray Bradbury & John Huston.
… of these high mortal miseries, carries us at last
among the sourceless primogenitures of the gods;
starring Gregory Peck as captain Ahab
so that, in the face of all the glad, hay-making
suns, and soft-cymballing, round harvest-
moons, we must needs give in to this: that the
gods themselves are not for ever glad. The
ineffaceable, sad birth-mark in the brow of
man, is but the stamp of sorrow in the signers.
Unwittingly here a secret has been divulged, which
perhaps might more properly, in set way, have
been disclosed before. With many other
particulars concerning Ahab, always had it
remained a mystery to some, why it was, that for a
certain period, both before and after the sailing of
the Pequod, he had hidden himself away with such
Grand-Lama-like exclusiveness; and, for that one
interval, sought speechless refuge, as it
were, among the marble senate of the dead.
Captain Peleg's bruited reason for this thing
appeared by no means adequate;
though, indeed, as touching all Ahab's deeper
part, every revelation partook more of significant
darkness than of explanatory light. But, in the
end, it all came out; this one matter did, at least.
That direful mishap was at the bottom of his
temporary recluseness. And not only this, but to
that ever-contracting, dropping circle
ashore, who, for any reason, possessed the
privilege of a less banned approach to him; to that
timid circle the above hinted casualty -
remaining, as it did, moodily unaccounted for by

12. 1930 Warner Bros. Directed by Lloyd Bacon. With John Barrymore, Walter
Long, Noble Johnson

13. The Ahab‘s dilemma consists in
the necessity to add moredetails
to the original storyline, because
of the different characteristics of
the target media or because of
the use of a different
communication styles, that the
story requires to be engaging

14. AL1: time and place AL2: wearable sensor and receiver
AL3: receiver on the door AL4: PDA
AL5: device in the pocket AL6: vibration
34 ALs from the 28 frames of the 5 scenarios

15. cause of the difference in translation
Early Level of Use of
design details symbols
impact on the target language
Working
Resource Context
Practice

16. early details symbols
design
resourc
es
context
workin
g
practice
AL1: time and place

17. early details symbols
design
resourc
es
context
workin
g
practice
AL2: wearable sensor and receiver

18. early details symbols
design
resourc
es
context
workin
g
practice
AL4: PDA
AL5: device in the pocket AL6: vibration

20. ANY
QUESTIONS?