Scenario-based requirements capture for human factors integration

Scenarios have been used by many engineering disciplines to assist the quality of their professional application to systems throughout a system life-cycle. At early phases of the system life-cycle, Systems and Software Engineers have adopted the Use Case as a means of representing system requirements through the address of user functions. Furthermore, usability engineers also use scenarios as a means of promoting better usability of systems throughout the system life-cycle. Moreover, all practitioners of the mentioned disciplines use some form of requirements capture and trace throughout the system life-cycle. However, in general Human Factors (HF) and Human Factors Integration (HFI) practitioners do not. This paper examines the efficacy of the multi disciplinary use of scenarios to assist the capture of HFI and system requirements. Such an approach benefits the early establishment of requirements and thus supports system life-cycle trace and matching of both physical and cognitive functions. © 2007 Springer-Verlag London Limited.