User Requirements Gathering for the Humanities

Submitted by Ruth on Mon, 2006-06-19 13:48. :: News

Early Best Practice Suggestions - January 2007

Between June 2006 and January 2007 the BVREH project held three workshops designed to emphasize the importance of requirements gathering for eResearch within the humanities community. The workshops aimed to establish best practice for humanities user requirements capture and succeeded in creating a community of individuals committed to embedding this important initiative within the humanities. The programme provided a good understanding of where the current issues and gaps in humanities user requirements are and what methodologies and practices currently exist within the humanities and eScience communities allowing attendees to decide what methods would and would not be relevant to the humanities.

Workshop aims and objectives:
• To emphasize the importance of requirements gathering for eResearch within the humanities community
• To establish best practice for user requirements and ongoing user testing within the humanities
• To establish which eScience methods of requirements capture are relevant to the humanities
• To bring together individuals from the humanities, eScience and established Requirements Gathering Centres
• To create a humanities-based user requirements community

As eScience progresses towards an eResearch focus the workshops were well placed to harness the interdisciplinary interests and knowledge of the humanities, eScience and eSocial Science communities. As user requirements gathering for the humanities is a new area, the opportunity to learn from the methods of the eScience community was an extremely valuable experience and significant areas of requirements capture knowledge and experience translated directly to the needs of the humanities community.

Workshop One: User Requirements in ICT Projects in Humanities – 20 July 2006
Workshop Two: Requirements Gathering in e-Science - 12th October 2006
Workshop Three: Establishing and Embedding Best Practice - 25th January 2007