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Studying the Influence of Empathy Maps on Brainstorming for Requirements Elicitation: A Quasi-Experiment

Abstract:

There is currently a trend that highlights the interest in the use of Design Thinking techniques for the elicitation of requirements. The evidence concerning the effectiveness of these techniques is, however, still scarce, which has consequently led us to carry out a quasi-experiment in order to evaluate the effectiveness of one of the most frequently used DT techniques: Empathy Maps. Empathy Maps were employed by students enrolled on a Bachelor’s degree in Computer to understand their influence on the effectiveness of Brainstorming sessions. The students perceived a slightly positive influence as regards the use of the Empathy Maps as part of a requirements elicitation, despite not finding statistically positive results. We obtained several insights that may be useful for practitioners, researchers and lecturers interested in using this type of techniques to improve the requirements elicitation practices, although this preliminary result is not conclusive and should be corroborated in further studies.