From user's mental models to information system's specification and vice versa by extended visual notation

The paper discusses how a story-telling theory and a related visual tool can support communication between users and analyst in developing an effective information systems design. To this end the paper firstly surveys approaches to requirements engineering from the communication point of view, then introduces a multimedia-based template as a tool to facilitate the construction of a shared mental model of the system between user and designer, and finally illustrates a case study and outlines some possible extensions of the proposed approach.