Creativity and Design Thinking as Facilitators in Requirements Elicitation

Context: The use of Creativity and Design Thinking (C&DT) techniques favor the generation of new ideas based on the needs of users and stakeholders, and can support software developers during the process of requirements elicitation. Objectives: In this work, we aim to identify C&DT techniques to perform requirements elicitation proposed in the literature and in the industry and investigate the perception of software developers about using these techniques. Methods: We conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) to identify the C&DT techniques in the literature and a regional survey with software development teams from several companies in Brazil to identify which techniques found in the literature are currently being used by organizations. The survey also investigated the level of knowledge that software developers have regarding the C&DT techniques, and whether they agree that the use of these techniques can help to achieve a more effective process of requirements elicitation. Results: In the SLR, we identified 86 C&DT techniques that support requirement elicitation activities. In the survey, most developers outlined that C&DT techniques facilitate requirements elicitation and stated that they have more knowledge and usage experience with DT techniques than creativity techniques. The most used DT techniques mentioned by survey participants were: interview, brainstorming, uses cases, activity analysis, user story, and rapid prototyping, whereas for creativity techniques were: analogies, creativity workshops, focus group, questions list, clarification, none and combining ideas. Conclusions: The results showed that despite the existence of a large number of techniques in the literature, the developers' lack of knowledge about these techniques makes them not used in the industry. However, the developers' responses showed that the use of C&DT techniques helps to make requirements elicitation more effective.