Enhancing Problem Clarification Artifacts with Online Deliberation
Fabr
´
ıcio Matheus Gonc¸alves, Felipe Rodrigues Jensen, Julio Cesar dos Reis and
Maria Cec
´
ılia Calani Baranauskas
Institute of Computing, University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Campinas, Brazil
Keywords:
Online Deliberation, Socially Aware Computing, Organisational Semiotics.
Abstract:
Information system design demands understanding requirements from diversified stakeholders. As an initial
step, the problem clarification is essential to obtain a shared view of the involved problems and solutions.
Several techniques have been proposed and practiced by the systems engineering community for problem
clarification. While existing literature has brought problem clarification artifacts via a online computational
system, stakeholders still lack means of meaning negotiation practices that usually happen in face-to-face
meetings. This paper proposes a deliberation model integrated to the online use of problem clarification ar-
tifacts. The deliberation provides a collaborative process for building common ground for reflection. The
proposed model illustrates the possibilities of deliberation in statements created in three artefacts of the Orga-
nizational Semiotics: Stakeholder Identification, Evaluation Frame and Semiotic Framework.
1 INTRODUCTION
The design of information systems usually involves
several people from different areas of knowledge and
distinct backgrounds collaborating together. The con-
struction of the whole system piece by piece can be
facilitated when a shared understanding of meanings
is built and understood by every person involved in
the process. In this work, we argue that collaborative
negotiation and deliberation processes are essential to
achieve a common ground among a group towards un-
derstanding the problem at hand and emerging a de-
sirable solution.
Online Deliberation (OD) is “a web-based form of
reasoning that gathers and carefully considers options
for actions and possible consequence of each” (Towne
and Herbsleb, 2012). Usually, OD platforms address
the discussion process, helping participants to clar-
ify a subject, by separating pros and cons arguments
and opinions from each participant (Gonc¸alves et al.,
2017). Some platforms provide visual clues of ar-
guments endorsement and opinion clusters (Kriplean
et al., 2012). Often, there is some kind of proposal
or issue that draws attention and guides the discus-
sion. The summary of the proposal indicates how
much discussion it has attracted and the level of con-
sensus among the participants; the visual clues help
the participants to choose proposals for further dis-
cussion.
This work explores problem clarification artifacts
as presented in the the Problem Articulation Method
(PAM), one of the components of MEASUR (“Meth-
ods for Eliciting, Analyzing and Specifying Users Re-
quirements”; Stamper and Backhouse (1988)). PAM
has been proved useful to: (1) articulate and de-
compose complex problem situations into manage-
able pieces and their interconnected relationships (Liu
et al., 2007); (2) facilitate the requirements elicitation
and to inform the design while constructing a shared
understanding of a problem among all involved stake-
holders (Hornung et al., 2013).
Recent efforts have brought the PAM artifacts
to an online platform - the Socially Aware Design
(SAwD) CASE tool (da Silva et al., 2016). SAwD
supports early design activities when a problem is
clarified and a solution is proposed by stakehold-
ers in a Socially Aware Computing (SAC) approach
(Baranauskas, 2014), alleviating time and geographic
boundaries. Although very useful, the remote usage
of PAM artifacts, by diversified stakeholders, lacks
the opportunity of meaning negotiation practices that
happen in face-to-face meetings, where people meet
together in a physical space around physical artifacts
(e.g. Figure 4). In our experience of the Organiza-
tional Semiotics artifacts usage, either in academic
context, with students, or in the professional context,
by experts, the online media favors individual work
and decisions at the expense of meaning negotiation
and shared understanding of the problem and of the
consequences of actions. The synchronous communi-
288
Gonçalves, F., Jensen, F., Reis, J. and Baranauskas, M.
Enhancing Problem Clarification Artifacts with Online Deliberation.
DOI: 10.5220/0006869102880295
In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Software Technologies (ICSOFT 2018), pages 288-295
ISBN: 978-989-758-320-9
Copyright © 2018 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
cation channel (chat box) provided by SAwD is still
not enough to ignite structured discussions or deliber-
ation. Also face-to-face or video-conference alterna-
tive are not always possible due to time restrictions.
In this article, we propose to include deliberation-
based meaning negotiation integrated to the online
use of PAM artifacts through SAwD. The goal is
to bring the meaning construction, that is facilitated
in the face-to-face workshops, to online SAwD ar-
tifacts, enhancing it with deliberation mechanisms.
This work presents a model for including OD on three
of the PAM artifacts (Stakeholder Identification, Eval-
uation Frame and Semiotic Framework). The model
also enables to record the occurred negotiations and
decisions in a system’s design process. Our proposed
model and interface elements were devised relying on
discussions conducted among researchers from Inter-
HAD
1
, a research group, who have used both paper-
based and the virtual artifacts, in addition to experi-
ence using OD platforms.
The remainder of this article is organized as fol-
lows: first we present the foundations and related
work (Section 2). Afterwards, we thoroughly describe
the proposed model and mechanisms for OD while
filling the virtual PAM artifacts in a illustrative sce-
nario (Section 3). Whereas Section 4 summarizes the
findings, Section 5 wraps up the article and points out
future research.
2 BACKGROUND
Socially Aware Computing (SAC) (Baranauskas,
2014) recognizes the communication between parties
as a culturally defined social phenomenon and pro-
poses artifacts to mediate this communication to en-
sure their creative, collaborative and consequential in-
volvement in design. SAC extends and articulates
methods and artifacts from Organizational Semiotics
(OS) (Liu, 2000; Stamper, 1973) and Participatory
Design (Muller et al., 1997) into Semio-participatory
Workshops (SpWs). SpWs artefacts are organized
to facilitate meaning construction among participants
while building a systemic and situated understanding
of a problem and emerging a socially desirable and
responsible system design.
2.1 Artefacts, Systems and
Socially-situated Practices
Clarification of the design situation and its knowledge
domain takes place during SpWs through the actions
1
http://interhad.nied.unicamp.br/
of those initially involved (primary stakeholders or in-
terested parties), using various artefacts. The selec-
tion of artefacts is situational and depends on factors
such as the process phase (clarification of the domain
phase, elucidation of meanings for representation ele-
ments, etc.) and schedule, as well as stakeholder con-
ditions (characterization of competences and differ-
ences between interested parties). We present briefly
the Stakeholder Identification Diagram (Liu, 2000),
the Evaluation Frame and the Semiotic Framework
(Baranauskas et al., 2005), which are artefacts gen-
erally used at the beginning of the process. Other
artefacts are shown in Baranauskas et al. (2013) and
de Almeida Neris et al. (2013), which illustrate a cy-
cle of eleven SpWs.
Stakeholder Identification Diagram (SID): Impact
Analysis and Scope of the Solution. It is assumed
that the stakeholders are governed by forces of infor-
mation and knowledge fields, and behave accordingly.
These forces are related to functions, tasks, personal
values or goals, social goals, etc. The objectives of
the SID are to clarify the design situation and share
knowledge within the group by exploring as compre-
hensively as possible the technical and social scope of
the project, i.e. parties directly or indirectly involved
in the problem or its possible solution. It includes
those initially in the group (primary stakeholders) as
well as new stakeholders who might be invited to join
the group.
Stakeholder analysis helps the group of partici-
pants to situate themselves, reflect on the frame and
see themselves reflected, understand the posed situa-
tion and the requirements and compromises of desired
solutions, through the discussion about the parties that
direct or indirectly influence or suffer the influence of
the situation or its solution. Figure 1 illustrates a SID
template, to be filled in by a project group. The arte-
fact distributes the stakeholders (annotated on sticky-
notes during the workshop) into different categories
representing different “information forces” in relation
to the situation under analysis. We use the following
categories: Actors and Responsible people those
who contribute directly to the situation or its solution
or are directly affected by it; Clients and Suppliers
those who provide data or are a source of information
in the situation or its solution, as well as those who
make use of it; Partners and Competitors market
aspects (also figuratively) related to the design situ-
ation; Bystander and Legislator community rep-
resentatives who influence and are influenced by the
situation in the social context (including the ones that
may never use the designed solution).
Evaluation Frame (EF): Raising Questions and So-
lutions/Ideas. The EF is an artefact that supports the
Enhancing Problem Clarification Artifacts with Online Deliberation
289
Figure 1: Stakeholder Identification Diagram.
sharing of meanings among the participants and in-
forms about specific issues of the interested parties
and ideas or solutions envisaged that will have poten-
tial impact on outlining a design solution.
The EF extends the SID, supporting the group
to consider, for each stakeholder category (Contribu-
tion, Source, Market, Community): (1) different is-
sues they face in the current situation or see as poten-
tial problem in the prospective situation (for the pur-
pose of design), and (2) ideas and solutions to iden-
tified issues. These two columns of the Evaluation
Frame are inspired by the phases of “criticism” and
“fantasy” proposed in Future Workshops (Jungk and
M
¨
ullert, 1987). The technique was originally devel-
oped for the participation of groups of citizens with
limited resources, in decision processes. It is a tech-
nique designed to shed light on a common problem-
atic situation, to generate visions about the future, and
to discuss how these views can be materialized. At the
criticism stage, the situation is investigated critically;
a brainstorming is carried out and general and critical
questions about the situation are put forward. In the
fantasy stage, the participants try to propose an image
(without restrictions to the utopia or exaggeration) of
future possibilities.
The EF enables the stakeholders to anticipate is-
sues and to project a situation in which the prospective
object of design is already present. This exercise re-
sults in elements (expressed in sticky notes) that iden-
tify, for each category of stakeholder, their interests,
main issues, and possible ideas that will impact on
requirements for the technical solutions. Figure 2 il-
lustrates the EF template, to be filled in by the project
group in a SpW. Figure 4,B show the actual artefact
in use in SpWs.
The Semiotic Framework (SF). From the semiotic
perspective, several layers of meaning must be con-
sidered in a system design. To Morris’s classification
for syntax, semantics, and pragmatics (N. and Morris,
1938), which deal respectively with sign structures,
Figure 2: Evaluation Frame.
meanings and uses, Stamper (1993) added three other
layers: physical, empirical, and social world. The
Stamper’s Semiotic Framework or Semiotic Lad-
der is composed of six layers (or steps), briefly
described as follows:
1. Social World layer: related to consequences of
the use of signs in human activities. It deals with
beliefs, expectations, commitments, law, culture,
etc.
2. Pragmatics layer: regards the intentional use of
signs and the behavior of agents. Issues related to
intention and negotiation are objects of it.
3. Semantics layer: concerns the relations between
a sign and what it refers to; signs in all modes of
signification.
4. Syntactics layer: regards the combination of signs
without considering their specific meaning.
5. Empirics layer: refers to the statistic properties of
signs, when different physical media and devices
are used.
6. Physical World layer: refers to the physical as-
pects of signs and their marks.
Figure 3 illustrates the SF template. The top three
steps are related to the use of signs, how they work in
communicating meanings and intentions, and the so-
cial consequences of their use. The bottom three steps
refer to how signs are structured and used, how they
are organized and conveyed, what physical properties
they possess, etc.
The SF artefact has been adapted to organize re-
quirements of the interactive system in the 6 layers of
information, as well as to organize elements of sys-
tem evaluation, considering aspects from its techno-
logical infrastructure (physical, empirical world, syn-
tactic layer) to the human information system (seman-
tics, pragmatics and social world).
ICSOFT 2018 - 13th International Conference on Software Technologies
290
Figure 3: Semiotic Framework.
Figure 4 shows SpW conducted by researchers in
a industrial setting (Buchdid et al., 2014), where var-
ious stakeholders gather around physical artifacts to
fill them. SID facilitates a holistic view of the stake-
holders, their roles and responsibilities that can influ-
ence or be influenced by the system design and its out-
comes (Figure 4, A). EF (Figure 4, B) concentrates in
anticipating possible problems the interested parties
might face and generating ideas that might cope with
those problems. SF (Figure 4, C) organizes require-
ments according to the six layers of information, rang-
ing from the technical infrastructure (physical world)
to the human information aspects (social world) with
the impact the information system may cause on peo-
ple directly (social interactions, understanding, feel-
ings, beliefs, etc.). These artefacts are used in SpWs
with the interested parties, who use post-its to bring
up and record contributions to the discussion on stake-
holders, anticipated problems, ideas of solutions, and
requirements of the prospective system.
Figure 4: Physical artifacts in Semio-participatory Work-
shops: A. Stakeholder Identification Diagram; B. Evalua-
tion Frame; and C. Semiotic Framework. Source: (Buchdid
et al., 2014).
Da Silva et al. (da Silva et al., 2016) developed
an online software tool to support the asynchronous
use of these artifacts, namely SAwD. This system is
composed by several artifacts for problem clarifica-
tion. During the design and problem clarification, the
artifacts available in the SAwD are filled with several
statements, e.g., a stakeholder which is representative
of the market layer as a competitor in SID; a prob-
lem or a ideia relevant for the stakeholders in the op-
erational layer in EF; or a feature important on the
pragmatics level at the SL. Figure 5 shows a part of
SAwD’s SID with some stakeholders already added
to it.
In SAwD, each artifact is composed by layers and
Community
Bystanders, Legislators
Market
Collaborators, Competitors
Source
Clients, providers
Contribution
Actors, Principals
Operation
Technical, System
Researchers
Developers
Students
Research Accountability System
Research Leader
Financial Department
Researchers
Partner Institutions
Grant Agencies
Social Aware Design
STAKEHOLDERS IDENTIFICATION
EVALUATION FRAMING
SEMIOTIC FRAMEWORK
Figure 5: SAwD’s interface showing SID filled with some
stakeholders.
statement views. SID has five layers (Operational,
Contribution, Source, Market, Community) and each
statement, i.e., stakeholder, has three fields to be filled
(Stakeholder, which is the name of the stakeholder,
Description and Values). EF also have five layers
and in each layer all stakeholders are listed. When
clicking in a stakeholder, the user needs to fill out
two fields (Question/Problem and Idea/Solution). In
the SF we have six steps (Physical World, Empirics,
Syntactics, Semantics, Pragmatics and Social World);
each step contains a list of features inserted by users.
Although relevant, SAwD still lacks means to dis-
cussion and deliberation about raised statements pro-
posed in it’s artifacts, as it would happen in a face-to-
face use of the artifacts in SpW. Although the system
provides an asynchronous global chat tool, it does not
include a deliberative model.
2.2 The ConsiderIt Model of
Deliberation
In previous investigations, we have conducted a com-
parative analysis on OD platforms for the support
of academic deliberation (Gonc¸alves et al., 2017).
Aligned with the literature (Gao et al., 2013), we de-
fined academic deliberation as a collaborative process
of building common ground for reflection. The goal
is to enable developing critical thought and arguing
with quality when challenged by new and contradict-
ing information, and ideas from others.
ConsiderIt (Kriplean et al., 2012) is a socially en-
hanced personal deliberation platform. Users are en-
couraged to reflect upon a issue by considering trade-
offs, as the discussion is framed by arguments fea-
tured as pros or cons. People can position them-
selves in a free-scale with extremes in “agree” and
“disagree” and contribute with pro or con points that
indicate the rationale behind that opinion (Figure 6).
Enhancing Problem Clarification Artifacts with Online Deliberation
291
Meta-Análise
next >< prev
Consider.it can help me
8/6/2016
edit delete
Use essa discussão para analizar criticamente a contribuição do uso da ferramenta Consider.It na reflexão sobre as leituras da disciplina. Ao longo do semestre teremos oportunidade de avaliar o
uso de outras ferramentas aplicadas a mesma tarefa, e assim, para substanciar uma meta-análise das decisões de design e requisitos envolvidos no projeto de ferramentas deliberativas. Ou seja,
ferramentas que permitam pessoas com diferentes perfis e interesses sintetizarem diferentes pontos de vista em busca de consenso ou pelo menos alcançando um equilíbrio entre características
desejáveis mas incompatíveis. A equipe do Consider.It usa a própria ferramenta para registrar bugs e sugestões de melhoria: https://consider.consider.it.PS: Sugerimos que pelo menos os bugs
mais graves sejam registrados lá, e apenas referenciados (link) nessa discussão, contribuindo para a melhoria da ferramenta.
Save your opinion
Give your Pros
or
Write a new Pro
Drag a Pro from the
right
Give your Cons
Drag a Con from the
left
Done
Add background or
evidence.
A succinct summary of your
point.
180
Sign your name
Write a new Con
Make one single point.
Add multiple Cons if you
have more.
Be direct. The summary is
your main point.
Review your language.
Don’t be careless.
No personal attacks.
cancel
Disagree Agree
Slide Your Overall Opinion
><
Others' Cons
A primeira impressão que
tive é a fonte ser tão fina.
Não achei algo aqui que
pudesse melhorar isto, a
não ser usar o zoom do
browser.
8/3/2016, 0 comments
Resume as opções entre
Agree and Disagree (read
more)
8/4/2016, 1 comment
Problemas (read more)
8/4/2016, 0 comments
Tablet (read more)
8/4/2016, 0 comments
Others' Pros
Pelo lado positivo, achei
legal a experiência da
divisão de opiniões
mostrada através de
imagens.
8/3/2016, 0 comments
simplicidade e intuição (read
more)
9/4/2016, 0 comments
Visual interessante (read more)
9/5/2016, 0 comments
É simples e intuitiva. (read
more)
9/6/2016, 0 comments
Figure 6: ConsiderIt main interface: (1) proposal category;
(2) proposal statement and opinion slider with others’ opin-
ion pictorial histogram; (3) new arguments entry in the cen-
ter and draggable arguments of others in the interface bor-
ders; (4) comments to the argument. Source: (Gonc¸alves
et al., 2017).
The deliberation category (1 in Figure 6) groups
related proposals. It allows users to navigate through
proposals in the same group. The proposal and opin-
ion slider (2 in Figure 6) consist of a statement, its au-
thor and details. The slider allows users to choose in a
continuum between “disagree” and “agree”. The user
may move a blue “face” icon which varies from “un-
happy” to “happy” depending on the agreement level.
Over the slider there is a pictorial histogram that rep-
resents the stance from other users. In another view,
this histogram is used to explore others’ opinions by
segments, highlighting the arguments of users’ clus-
ters with similar opinions.
A opinion may be supported by arguments (3 in
Figure 6). Others’ arguments are presented in the in-
terface borders and can be dragged into a personal ar-
gument list in the center. In this list, the platform en-
ables users to write new pros and cons composed by
a succinct summary, and details of the argument that
might include evidences backing the argument. Once
published, new arguments become available to others.
Authors are represented by avatars on the side of the
argument balloon. When someone else appropriates
the argument, i.e., gets behind it, this person’s avatar
appears behind the author’s avatar. By clicking on the
supporters’ avatar cluster, the platform presents their
different stances in the histogram. Users can also post
comments (4 in Figure 6) to an argument. They are
displayed within the arguments details when the sum-
mary balloon is clicked.
3 BRIDGING PROBLEM
CLARIFICATION AND ONLINE
DELIBERATION
Each of the statements created in the artifacts by us-
ing SAwD are potential candidates for deliberation
and shall benefit from the views and arguments from
diverse stakeholders. By introducing the possibil-
ity of using a deliberation model as part of the cre-
ation/edition of statements, we may redeem the bene-
fits provided by deliberation.
We integrated each statement created in SAwD to
a ConsiderIt proposal to arouse deliberation. This
way users can hop into deliberation while navigating
through the artifacts. A deliberation section is added
in each of the statements. This work proposes im-
provements in the statement views in the SAwD case
tool. These improvements refine the statement with
an organized and succinct view of deliberations.
Figure 7 presents an overview of the flow in which
deliberation is achieved combining SAwD artifacts
and ConsiderIt. The user creates a new statement in
the SAwD, e.g. a stakeholder, a problem or a feature;
SAwD then creates a new proposal for that statement
in ConsiderIt. Afterwards, SAwD statement view is
updated with a summary of the deliberation status
represented by the Opinion Slider. If a user decides to
join the deliberation, by clicking the Opinion Slider,
SAwD redirects him/her to ConsiderIt, where users
can deliberate by presenting Pros and Cons arguments
in relation to that statement. What is deliberated upon
depends on each statement, e.g., the representative-
ness of a stakeholder in a layer. In the following, we
present how deliberation is achieved in different arti-
facts.
SAwD Consider.It
Creates stakeholder
Updates the stakeholder view
with the opinion bar
Joins stakeholder deliberation
Redirects to Consider.It proposal
Creates a new proposal
with the stakeholders name
and description
Proposal created
Figure 7: Flow of information when creating a new state-
ment for deliberation.
Deliberation in the Stakeholder Identification. In
SAwD’s stakeholder view detail, the deliberation
ICSOFT 2018 - 13th International Conference on Software Technologies
292
prompt is located below the stakeholder’s values sec-
tion (Figure 8). Representativeness is what is deliber-
ated for this artifact. This is understood as deliberat-
ing about the roles, responsibilities and stakeholder’s
values related to its inserted layer. In ConsiderIt, a
category is created for each layer in SID with the the
following name “Stakeholder Identification - Name of
the layer”. Inside each category a new proposal is
created for each new stakeholder inserted in SAwD.
In ConsiderIt, the stakeholder’s name becomes the ti-
tle of the proposal and its description the summary
of the proposal. The proposals are composed by the
opinion slider and a list of Pros and Cons as shown in
(Figure 9).
Figure 8: Stakeholder identification: Stakeholder view with
Opinion Slider (adapted from SAwD and ConsiderIt).
Figure 9: ConsiderIt arguments regarding a given stake-
holder from the SAwD.
In the SAwD’s SID (Figure 10), we added color
coding to the stakeholders to invite deliberation. The
stakeholder color changes according to the Opinion
Slider strength towards agreement or disagreement.
When a new stakeholder is added its color is white
(see Research Leader and Developers in Figure 10).
When participants start deliberating about that stake-
holder, color and opacity may vary; if the level of
disagreement of a stakeholder is too high, i.e., most
of the participants are disagreeing with its represen-
tativeness in a given layer, the stakeholder view starts
to be become transparent to indicate that the stake-
holder is losing its “place” in that layer (see Students
and Researches in Figure 10). The more participants
agree with a stakeholder position (layer), it starts to
take a yellowish color (see Financial Department in
Figure 10) until fully yellow (see Researchers, Re-
search Accounting System, Partner Institutions and
Grand Agencies in Figure 10). This represents that
the stakeholder became fully part of that layer and the
majority of the participants agree with its representa-
tiveness.
Deliberation in the Evaluation Frame. In the EF,
users add problems and ideas related to SID’s layers
and stakeholders. At this stage, the relevance a prob-
lem to the stakeholders in that layer is deliberated, as
is the agreement around a idea to improve stakehold-
ers life. As many problems and ideas may be pro-
posed by participants, deliberation plays a vital role
in deciding which are the most pressing issues, and
which ideas gather more consensus among the par-
ticipants. Problems, ideas and deliberations are pre-
sented as title and opinion slider in ConsiderIt, fol-
lowing the bubble effect to visually reveal the most
relevant one, i.e., the most agreed problem or solution,
moves upwards (Figure 11). In ConsiderIt, a category
is created for each EF’s layer to group proposals for
each problem or idea statement with a clear and con-
cise summary of it, much like occurs for stakeholders
(cf., Figure 9).
Deliberation in the Semiotic Framework. For the
SF we have an enumeration of features in the steps of
the ladder, from physical artifacts, passing by seman-
tic meanings to social world necessities and impacts.
These are deliberated regarding whether or not these
features and requirements are used/caused/expected
in the context of the design. For each statement in
each layer of the SF, a new deliberation is proposed
and represented by the opinion slider after each state-
ment in a similar way as seen in Figure 11, but with
only one column called features. In ConsiderIt, a cat-
egory is created for each SF’s layer to group the pro-
posals created for each feature inserted in SAwD (like
Figure 9).
Enhancing Problem Clarification Artifacts with Online Deliberation
293
Figure 10: SID: Color coding to represent deliberation aspects of stakeholders. Adapted from SAwD.
Figure 11: Contribution layer of Evaluation Frame (EF), problems and ideas from stakeholder point of view. Adapted from
SAwD and ConsiderIt.
4 DISCUSSION
The structured arguments shared among the partici-
pants may work as a formal way of visualizing mean-
ing construction and sharing. This could be enriched
with more social elements and emotional cues like
pictures, testimonies, and emoticons reactions. The
contribution of this work involves incorporating the
Consider.It deliberation model into the SAwD system,
which allows participants to start a deliberation ses-
sion, being able to bring their arguments to discus-
sion, endorse and vote about any statement inserted
in a artifact in an asynchronous way.
By observing the way people behave in the face
to face meetings using the artefacts, whenever par-
ticipants were suggesting ideas and filling the arti-
facts, other participants could question the relevance
of those ideas or ask for clarification. A delibera-
tive session, where people present arguments pros or
cons leads to the enrichment of meaning represented
by each item in the artifacts. Although we might ob-
serve that these deliberation sessions occur in a man-
ner of displaying pros, cons and reaching a consen-
sus, there is a model behind this behavior. This model
guides the deliberation session to enable stakeholders
to reach an agreement, sintetize what was deliberated
and take action.
The rationale behind the process, i.e., the way
the deliberation starts, how the arguments are ex-
posed, the meaning of accepting or endorsing argu-
ments from others, the way the synthesis occurs, how
the action are decided, etc. are hard things to track in
a face to face deliberation session. The definition of a
deliberation model in an online environment enables
to record the deliberation sessions and build a ratio-
nale upon it. This benefits problem clarification with
deliberation and applify the learning in the process.
ICSOFT 2018 - 13th International Conference on Software Technologies
294
5 CONCLUSION
Online deliberation can favor the collaborative de-
sign of systems, but there is little support to enable
stakeholders to discuss the design clarification phase.
In this paper, we proposed a way of incorporating
a deliberation model into problem clarification arti-
facts in an online system. Our proposal benefits de-
liberation throughout the steps required to stakehold-
ers create a shared view of the involved problems
and solutions in the underlying system design. Our
model can lead to refined requirements because it en-
ables meaning clarification among the participants.
The proposed solution enables to report and docu-
ment decisions based on informed discussions, which
is hardly accomplished in online-mediated case sup-
port tools. Future work involves extensive case study
conduction to measure the potential improvements in
requirements elicitation.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work is supported by the National Council for
Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq)
through grant #308618/2014-9 and by S
˜
ao Paulo Re-
search Foundation (FAPESP), grants #2015/16528-0,
#2015/24300-9 and #2017/02325-5.
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