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

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

, 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

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

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).

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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

❶

❷

❸

❹

❷

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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