Visual requirement representation

Multimedia technology has played an important role in modern computing because it offers more natural and user-friendly interactions with an automated system. This is particularly true for systems utilizing graphical, icon or window-based input and output. Multimedia technology also facilitates ‘‘reuse’’ more naturally, since the basic components and functions of presentation and animation can be reused for several different animation scenarios. This is evidenced by the rapid prototyping capability of computer and video games where although the characters and story lines change, the basic animation remains constant. In this paper we utilize multimedia technology for eliciting requirements of software systems, particularly those systems that utilize windows(or graphical)-based interactions with the user. Our methodology will implicitly emphasize reuse since in our approach reusable components include not only code and documents, but also voice narration, animation sequences and message mechanisms. We call such software components as multimedia reusable components (MRCs). Using MRCs, one can view software requirements instead of reading textual representation of the requirements. 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.