Early elicitation and definition of requirements for an interactive multimedia information system

The literature on requirements engineering contains little in the way of either theoretical guidance or empirical case studies relating to the specification of requirements for interactive multimedia information systems. This paper describes some of the special difficulties currently encountered in the early stages of developing such systems. It then presents a description of the methods and tools used in the early stages of the MARS project, whose aim is to develop an interactive multimedia system for use in school-based health education and anti-smoking campaigns directed at children aged 9-10. The paper ends with a discussion of lessons learnt with respect to some current issues in requirements engineering, and considers the extent to which the particular problems identified earlier in the paper were addressed by the methods and tools used in the MARS project. We conclude that further work in this area is badly needed, so that better guidance on the specification of requirements for interactive multimedia information systems can be given in future.