If you have picked up this book and are browsing the Preface, you may well be asking yourself"What makes this book different from the large number I can find on amazon. com?". Well, the answer is a blend of the academic and the practical, and views of the subject you won't get from anybody else: how psychology and linguistics influence the field of requirements engineering (RE). The title might seem to be a bit of a conundrum; after all, surely requirements come from people so all requirements should be user-centred. Sadly, that is not always so; many system disasters have been caused simply because requirements engineering was not user-centred or, worse still, was not practised at all. So this book is about putting the people back into com puting, although not simply from the HCI (human-computer interaction) sense; instead, the focus is on how to understand what people want and then build appropriate computer systems.

Here is the first of a four-volume set that constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCII 2007, held in Beijing, China, jointly with eight other thematically similar conferences. It covers interaction design: theoretical issues, methods, techniques and practice; usability and evaluation methods and tools; understanding users and contexts of use; and models and patterns in HCI.

The idea for this workshop originated when I came across and read Martin Zelkowitz's book on Requirements for Software Engineering Environments (the proceedings of a small workshop held at the University of Maryland in 1986). Although stimulated by the book I was also disappointed in that it didn't adequately address two important questions - "Whose requirements are these?" and "Will the environment which meets all these requirements be usable by software engineers?". And thus was the decision made to organise this workshop which would explicitly address these two questions. As time went by setting things up, it became clear that our workshop would happen more than five years after the Maryland workshop and thus, at the same time as addressing the two questions above, this workshop would attempt to update the Zelkowitz approach. Hence the workshop acquired two halves, one dominated by discussion of what we already know about usability problems in software engineering and the other by discussion of existing solutions (technical and otherwise) to these problems. This scheme also provided a good format for bringing together those in the HeI community concerned with the human factors of software engineering and those building tools to solve acknowledged, but rarely understood problems.

Human-CenteredSoftwareEngineering: BridgingHCI,UsabilityandSoftwareEngineering From its beginning in the 1980’s, the ?eld of human-computer interaction (HCI) has beende?nedasamultidisciplinaryarena. BythisImeanthattherehas beenanexplicit recognition that distinct skills and perspectives are required to make the whole effort of designing usable computer systems work well. Thus people with backgrounds in Computer Science (CS) and Software Engineering (SE) joined with people with ba- grounds in various behavioral science disciplines (e. g. , cognitive and social psych- ogy, anthropology)inaneffortwhereallperspectiveswereseenasessentialtocreating usable systems. But while the ?eld of HCI brings individuals with many background disciplines together to discuss a common goal - the development of useful, usable, satisfying systems - the form of the collaboration remains unclear. Are we striving to coordinate the varied activities in system development, or are we seeking a richer collaborative framework? In coordination, Usability and SE skills can remain quite distinct and while the activities of each group might be critical to the success of a project, we need only insure that critical results are provided at appropriate points in the development cycle. Communication by one group to the other during an activity might be seen as only minimally necessary. In collaboration, there is a sense that each group can learn something about its own methods and processes through a close pa- nership with the other. Communication during the process of gathering information from target users of a system by usability professionals would not be seen as so- thing that gets in the way of the essential work of software engineering professionals.

"This book provides a detailed account concerning information society and the challenges and application posed by its elicitation, specification, validation and management: from embedded software in cars to internet-based applications, COTS packages, health-care, and others"--Provided by publisher.

This book has two audiences: the practising Requirements Engineer and the advanced student of software engineering or computer science. The book is unique because it introduces latest research results and, at the same time, presents highly practical and useful techniques. This book is complementary to texts on software requirements and system Requirements Engineering because of its focus on the problems caused by the fact that Requirements Engineering involves people. Throughout this book the author has sought to introduce the reader to a number of techniques which have not previously been included within mainstream computer science literature. The techniques chosen have been shown to work in practice in both commercial and research pro jects. The appendices contain step-by-step guides to particular tech niques; sufficient detail is provided for readers to try the techniques for themselves. The problem faced by the Requirements Engineer is complex, it con cerns meeting the needs of the customer and at the same time meeting the needs of the designer.