Integrating the Sustainable Development Goals into Design Science Research: Impact evaluation of the Monitoring Obesity App

The development of software applications assumes a leading role in the definition of sustainability strategies. Sustainable Software Engineering intends to provide a set of guidelines necessary to define, create and execute sustainable software applications. The paper aims to apply, in the early stages of the life cycle, the Sustainable Software Engineering approach integrated with the Design Science Research methodology. During the process a tool “SDG Assessment Tool” is used to assess the impact of the Sustainable Development Goals. The methodology underlying the work was Design Science Research to validate the applicability of the approach. As main results we present a reflection about the feasibility of the approach when developing an application to monitor obesity. It is concluded that the use of the approach indicates that the specification of requirements is a phase of particular interest to enhance the inclusion of key elements of sustainable software.