Using Focus Rules in Requirements Elicitation Dialogues

Requirements engineering is a complex task which benefits from computer support. Despite the progress made in automatic reasoning on requirements, the tools supporting requirements elicitation remain difficult to use. In this paper we propose a novel approach where a tool's reasoning is intimately linked to the dialogue it has with its users. Because the dialogue is guided by rules ensuring coherence, the interaction with the tool is more natural. We discuss in detail the rules we use to organise the dialogue and how me apply them to the requirements elicitation tool. We present an evaluation of this approach demonstrating improvements is usability during the elicitation process.