Speculative Requirements: Design Fiction and RE

Abstract

Many innovative software products are conceived, developed and deployed without any conventional attempt to elicit stakeholder requirements. Rather, they are the result of the vision and intuition of a small number of creative individuals who perceive a market opportunity that has been facilitated by the emergence of a new technology. In this paper we consider how the conditions that enable new products' emergence might be better anticipated, making innovations a little less reliant on individual vision and a little more informed by stakeholder need. We contend that this is particularly important where just-over-the-horizon technology would have the potential for social impact, good or bad. Speculative design describes a basket of techniques that seek to explore this landscape. We focus particularly on one of these, design fiction, and describe a case study where it was used to explore how plausible new technologies might impact on dementia care.