Persona-and-Scenario Based Requirements Engineering for Software

Embedded in Digital Consumer Products

Mikio Aoyama
Department of Information and Telecommunication Engineering
Nanzan University
27 Seirei, Seto, 489-0863, Japan
mikio.aoyama@nifty.com

Abstract shown in Table 1, the services provided by mobile

The challenge of the requirements engineering to phones have evolved from voice communications,
digital consumer products lies in that the users are then data communications of e-mails and Web
unknown many of wide variety. The major browsers, and multimedia systems including a
contributions of this article include a technique to digital camera, a video viewer, and a MP3 music
identify persona to provide a rich contextual model player.
of a group of primary targeted users based on
Table 1 Evolution of Major Features in Mobile Phones
conjoint analysis theory, and a technique to
identify the value and hot spots in the Yr G Communication Contents/Media Commerce/App.
95 Voice
requirements through the interaction analysis 96 2
between personas and scenarios. We applied the 97 G Music Tone
proposed methodology to mobile phone product 98
lines through a series of field studies conducted 99 2 E-mail Web Browser,
with more than 150 users from 2003 to 2004 in . Color Display
Japan. The studies revealed the various aspects of 00 5 Camera
01 G SD Card Java Apps
non-technical users, and proved the effectiveness of
02 High Speed Data Video Location Service
proposed methodology in the requirements 03 Video(TV) Phone Flash Browser GPS/Navigation
engineering for digital consumer products. 3
Wallet, Security
G Full Music
Keywords 04 Wireless LAN (Finger Print
Player
Requirements Engineering, Requirements Acquisition, Sensor)
Embedded Software, User-Centered Design, Interaction
Design, Socio-Technical Systems, Conjoint Analysis, and
Now, the mobile phone is entering another
Marketing Engineering.
evolution stage providing e-commerce, debit/credit
card services including a digital wallet system
1. Challenge of Requirements through wireless technology, and a security system
Engineering for Digital Consumer with a fingerprint sensor [15].
Products Although rich functionalities available, it’s well
mentioned users use only a small part of them.
This paper proposes a methodology of Mobile phone vendors also recognized the problems
requirements engineering of embedded software for of functional complexity and limited use of the
digital consumer products. functionality through very restricted user interface
Digital consumer products have been rapidly [12, 25]. For example, user penetration of the 3G
evolving and becoming ubiquitous into our daily mobile phone has been under expectations for last
life. Such products include mobile phones, PDAs, three years after its introduction to Japanese
digital cameras, digital TVs, DVD recorders, and market in 2002. So, both phone vendors and
car navigation systems. The size and complexity of communication operators have been seeking the
software embedded in such products have revitalization of the 3G mobile phones.
increased at an astonishing rate. For example, It’s well-mentioned that there is a big perception
mobile phones have evolved extremely fast from 2G gap between developers and users in digital
(2nd Generation) to 3G (3rd Generation) for the last consumer products. The challenge of the
decade [2, 8, 14]. Thus, the size of software in requirements engineering of such products lies in
mobile phones reached millions lines of code. As that the users are unknown many of wide variety.

Proceedings of the 2005 13th IEEE International Conference on Requirements Engineering (RE’05)
0-7695-2425-7/05 $20.00 © 2005 IEEE
 Unlike enterprise systems, we can’t simply elicit
requirements from the unknown users.
In this research, we claim the importance of
understanding the users in requirements
engineering. The contribution of this paper is to
propose a methodology to identify persona, a rich
contextual model of targeted users based on
conjoint analysis theory, and evaluate the
requirements through the interaction analysis
between personas and scenarios. To prove the
proposed methodology, we conducted a series of
field studies from 2003 to 2004 by applying the
methodology to mobile phone product lines with
more than 150 focused users. It revealed the
effectiveness and problems of the proposed
methodology and lessons learned.
We identified unique characteristics in
requirements engineering for software embedded to
digital consumer products.
(1) Unknown Many Users
In the requirements engineering for enterprise
systems, we know, directly or indirectly, users. So,
the key process is requirements elicitation from the
users. In digital consumer products, however, users
are unknown many. So, we need to start with
identifying the users, if it’s possible, and elicit
requirements from them. Shrink wrap software
products, such as office tools, are also intended to
unknown many users. However, the difference of
embedded software from shrink wrap software
products lies that users are not aware software in
the digital consumer products.
(2) Wide Variety of Users
The users are extremely diverse in the sense of,
for example, computer literacy. There is a big gap
between developers and users in the level of
computer literacy, which leads to a gap between
their perspectives to the requirements.
(3) Unexplored World in Requirements
Engineering
The importance of requirements engineering in
digital consumer products was pointed out in
requirements engineering community [21].
Requirements engineering is also attributed as a
major source of errors in embedded software
systems [16]. However, there are little materials
available in this area.
The structure of this paper is as follows: Section
2 provides a survey of conventional techniques and
problems. Section 3 sketches our methodology,
Proceedings of the 2005 13th IEEE International Conference on Requirements Engineering (RE’05)
0-7695-2425-7/05 $20.00 © 2005 IEEE
Hanako method, and its underlying strategy.
Section 4 describes the process and techniques of
Hanako method. Section 5 reports a series of field
studies applying the Hanako method to mobile
phone product lines. Section 6 discusses the
evaluation of the field studies. Conclusions follow
in Section 7.
2. Conventional Methods and Problems
(1) User-Centered Requirements Engineering
UCD (User-Centered Design) has been applied to
many software products, mostly to the UI (User
Interface) design [6, 13]. In requirements
engineering, User-Centered Requirements
Engineering has been emerged, and is applied to
various systems [23]. In this area, scenarios have
been widely used to model the interactions between
users and systems [1, 4, 19]. However, the
fundamental problem in requirements engineering
for digital consumer products lies that we don’t
know the user. On the other hand, in industry
design, it’s frequently emphasized to know the
users and to observe their behaviors [9, 13]. So, we
focus on the user’s view points [17], and describe
the rich contextual information of user behaviors.
Therefore, the central issue of this article is how to
identify the user.
(2) Persona
One of the promising concepts to identify the
user is persona, proposed by Cooper [5]. Reflecting
that Persona is a mask used in ancient Greek play,
Jung defined persona as a social role of person in a
specific context [22], which is an appropriate model
in the context of requirements engineering.
Although some key concepts to apply persons in
software design are proposed [5, 18], any specific
methodology based on persona is not provided.
Especially, there is no guideline to identify persona.
So, the major technique discussed in this paper is
rational method to identify the persona.
(3) Product Marketing, Conjoint Analysis and
Marketing Engineering
In practice, vendors of consumer products are
conducting market survey through their internal
organizations or external professional agencies [10].
However, it’s often observed that the market
survey and development organizations are
separated. Moreover, the market survey is
sometimes very subjective. Recently, marketing
engineering is emerged as a systematic and
rational technique for studying market based on
 statistical techniques. Among them, conjoint 3.2 Process of Hanako Method
analysis [11] and its variants have been used to
identify the user’s preference on multiple attributes As illustrated in Figure 2, Hanako method
of products, such as functionality, design and price consists of two stages of process: persona analysis
[7]. However, the application of conjoint analysis to and requirements value analysis between persona
requirements engineering is not explored yet. In and scenarios of services. The details of these
this research, we intended to integrate the conjoint processes are explained in the next section.
analysis with requirements engineering.
Persona Analysis Many Features of
3. Hanako Method and its Strategy Unknown Many Users
Requirements
Unknown Values

Disjoint Clustering
Traditionally, Hanako and Taro was the most Identification of
and Simultaneous
Identification of
Personas Hot Spot Scenarios
popular given name of Japanese women and men, Conjoint Analysis

respectively. Even, Hanako is a tile of one of the Personas Requirements Scenarios

most popular Japanese magazine targeted to young
women. Hanako is still recognized as a symbol of Requirements Value Analysis
between Personas and Scenarios
young Japanese women. So, we named our To Require To Provide
requirements engineering methodology Hanako Context
Value of Requirements
method. Requirements Value Analysis

Figure 2 Framework of Hanako Method

3.1 Strategy of Hanako Method

Figure 1 illustrates the strategy of the Hanako

4. Persona-Scenario Analysis Based on
method. The horizontal axis represents one of the Simultaneous Conjoint Analysis
aspects of users. In this case, it represents maturity
level of computer literacy. By their nature, 4.1 Analysis Process
developers are highly literate in computing.
However, most of the users are less literate. So, we The detail processes of Hanako method are
use persona as a representative of a group of users. illustrated in Figure 3. The persona analysis
We could identify multiple personas, which form a process is divided into the two processes of
group named cast. One of the personas, who simultaneous disjoint clustering, and identification
represents the core users, or uses core features, is of personas and service hot spots.
called primary persona. Once primary persona is
Many Features of
identified, we can start requirements elicitation Unknown Many Users Simultaneous Disjoint
Unknown Values
Clustering
process with the primary persona. The primary
persona can be defined by composing multiple Clustering Users into Disjoint Clustering Services into Disjoint
personas and may not correspond to real people. To Groups by User Profiles Groups by Service Profiles

acquire deep and rich contextual information on Simultaneous Conjoint

Analysis between
users is the key of Hanako method. Disjoint User Groups
Identifying Personas as and Service Groups Identifying Hot Spots of
Identification of Personas Requirements Providing
Value of Requirements

Target Users the Minimal Set of

(Number of Users)

the Most Influential Users and Services Hot Spots High Value
Distribution of

Primary Persona

Requirements Value
Analysis between
Hanako =

Professional
Developers
Persona
Persona

Cast Personas and Scenarios

Requirements Value Analysis
Persona

Fig. 3 Process of Hanako Method

User Profile
(Ex.: Computer
Conventional Literacy)
(1) Simultaneous Disjoint Clustering of Users and
Elicitation Requirements
Strategy Elicitation Strategy of
Hanako Method (2) Identification of Personas and Service Hot
Spots
Figure 1 Strategy of Hanako Method This step is intended to identify primary
persona and cast with conjoint analysis [7, 11].

Proceedings of the 2005 13th IEEE International Conference on Requirements Engineering (RE’05)
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 (3) Requirements Value Analysis
From the viewpoints of persona, we analyze the
value and hot spots of requirements with scenarios.
4.2 Simultaneous Conjoint Analysis between
Users and Services
(1) Simultaneous Disjoint Clustering of Users and
Services
The first step of conjoint analysis is to
simultaneously decompose the users and services
into a set of disjoint groups, U and R, respectively.
We decompose user space U into a set of n
disjoint user groups.
U=™ui for i = i..n
representative mobile phone services while the axis
to upper right shows 7 disjoint user groups of 105
users. Figure 4 indicates how each user group
evaluates the value of each service.
From the simultaneous conjoint analysis, we
classify the services into the following three usage
categories.
1) Variant Services: This is a set of services varying
the value across different user groups. This is a hot
spot in requirements attractive to specific user
groups.
2) Common Services: This is a set of services
commonly used by almost all user groups. These
services provide a foundation of all requirements,
(1) and can be a frozen spot in the requirements.

In conjoint analysis, the primary criteria of 3) Marginal Services: This is a set of services which
disjoint decomposition are user profiles. However, are much less frequently used by almost all user
selection of profile attributes varies. For market groups. These services can be interpreted as dead
segmentation, Kotler suggested a set of attributes services.
called segmentation variables [10]. Among them, ES Male
ES Female
demographic variables are most widely used. We PS Male
PS Female
have chosen a set of demographic variables of age, 5.00 BP over 35
4.00 BP under 35
gender, occupation and generation since they are 3.00
House Wife

closely related to needs, wants and usage of 2.00

customers [7]. 1.00
0.00

Similarly, we decompose the requirements space

M har all Hstor g
C C Hi alin
ai ac o y
l I te ld
l i
al d

R into a set of m disjoint requirements groups.

C Re

Im q u i r s
a ry
H
id ge
B o us
N pl i W eo
n

BP P un e W
b
R=™rj for i = i..m (2)
a v ca e

PS ov de ife
V

D V iga ti on
ce

Al Cal M ato n P F er r 3
riv ib tio
Fa

ES S M ema 35 5
a r cu o d r
m la e a l
Since we are interested in the value of new em le e
Ap

e r

C to r ES F
va

ck Ma al
le e
lo
Ja

requirements of 3G mobile phones, we decomposed

the requirements into the following three types:
1) Communication Services,
Figure 4 Preference Matrix of Users and Requirements
2) Contents/Multimedia Services, and
3) Commerce/Application Services. 4.3 Identification of Persona and Service Hot
Spots
(2) Simultaneous Conjoint Analysis between User
Groups and Requirements Groups
(1) Identification of Target User Group by Variant
The second step is to identify the preference of Services
each user group to services in terms of usage of the
Since usages of services vary in the set of variant
services. We selected, say, 15 users in each user
services identified in the previous, we can use the
group and several representative services from
variant services to identify the target user group(s).
three service types, and asked users preference of
Here, we define the target user group as the user
those services by written questionnaire and
group using the services in variant services most.
following interviews. We employed usage frequency
As a measure of usage of services, for each user
of service as the measure of preference value, and
group ui, we define the service coverage of the
converted into the 5 grades from 1 to 5.
group on variant and common services, Ci, as the
Figure 4 illustrates a preference matrix of services measure of user preference.
and user groups resulted from the conjoint analysis
Ci = ™vij
at the field study on mobile phone products lines
conducted in 2004. An axis to upper left shows 14 for j={j: rjŊ{Variant/Common Service}Ȃ} (3)

Proceedings of the 2005 13th IEEE International Conference on Requirements Engineering (RE’05)
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 (2) Identification of Primary Persona and Cast
To identify primary persona and cast, we define
the following two elicitation methods.
1) Elicitation of Simple Primary Persona
Primary persona is a user group, i, of the highest
coverage Ci. Cast is a set of personas of a certain
threshold level of coverage, C0, as defined in (4).
Cast = {i: Ci • C0}
2) Elicitation of Virtual/Composite Primary Persona
To elaborate a primary persona with a certain
level of coverage, which no single persona can meet,
we may compose multiple personas to create a
virtual primary persona by the following procedure.
a) Select an initial primary persona as the simple
primary persona identified by equation (4).
b) Add a persona complementing the coverage of
the initial primary persona so that the total
coverage of two personas meets the criteria C0.
4.4 Analyzing Requirements Value Structure by
Personas and Scenarios
(1) Value Analysis of Requirements by Persona
In the second stage, persona plays a vital role to
increase the value of requirements. The following
process is proposed to identify the value-added
requirements by analyzing the interaction between
persona and scenario.
1) Analysis of value structure in the requirements
from the view points of primary persona/cast.
2) Identification of hot spots in the requirements
by analyzing the interaction between primary
persona and scenario of use cases.
3) Acquire new requirements from the hot spots.
(2) Identification of Hot Spots by Persona and
Scenarios
Scenarios are widely-used to describe interactions
between users and services [1, 4]. Once primary
persona is identified, we can evaluate the
interactions between primary persona and service
in terms of persona’s usage of scenarios. We can
identify the hot spots of the requirements as the
parts of high usage, i.e. preference, of personas in
the scenarios. By tracing the scenarios in the hot
spots, we can find extension points to add new
services in order to increase the value of the
requirements. As a representation of scenario, we
introduce STD (Service Transition Diagram), a
simplified state transition diagram [24]. With STD,
Proceedings of the 2005 13th IEEE International Conference on Requirements Engineering (RE’05)
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we interview to users corresponding to the primary
persona to trace their interaction with scenarios.
5. Field Studies
We conducted two stages of field studies from
2003 to 2004 in Japan.
The first field study was conducted in 2003 with
(4) 60 users in order to verify the Hanako methodology
[3]. The second field study was conducted in 2004
with 105 users in order to analyze the value and
hot spots in the requirements of 3G mobile phones.
We also intended to verify the results of field study
in 2003 by those in 2004.
5.1 First Field Study in 2003
5.1.1 Design of Field Study in 2003
We conducted the first field study in the following
two steps.
(1) Persona analysis by written questionnaire with
60 users.
(2) To identify the interaction between persona and
scenarios, we interviewed to the users in the
focused user group identified as a primary persona
in the step (1).
5.1.2 Simultaneous Disjoint Clustering of Users
and Services
(1) Clustering Users
To examine the contributions of the level of
computer literacy on the usage of mobile phones,
we randomly selected 60 students from the Faculty
of Mathematical Sciences and Information
Engineering and Faculty of Policy Studies in
Nanzan University, as shown in Table 2.
Table 2 Participating User Groups in 2003
Category Male Female Total
ES(Engineering Students) 14(ES M) 17(ES F) 32
PS(Policy Studies Students) 14(PS M) 15(PS F) 29
Total 28 32 60
(2) Clustering Mobile Phone Services
We allocated three major clusters of services,
defined in Section 4.2, as follows.
1) Communication services include voice phone, e-
mail, and video phone services.
2) Contents/Multimedia services include Web
browser, music player, digital camera, video
camera, and radio/TV receiver.
 3) Commerce/Application services include Java groups. We can conclude ES F is the primary
application, game, navigator, alarm clock, and persona of mobile phones.
calculator. One of the advantages of persona approach is to
From three clusters, we selected some 20 services provide rich and concrete characteristics of persona
listed in Table 3. We further classified the services [5]. As a language to describe persona, we defined a
by the following two levels of required literacy: template of persona pattern language including
a) Popular services expected to be used by most personal profile, illustration of persona’s face,
users including less literate users. pattern of service usage, and specific interest to the
services. We collected students’ profiles and daily
b) Advanced services which less literate users usage patterns through interviews, and described
may not use. the primary persona as follows.
Table 3 Clusters of Mobile Phone Services in 2003
Service Groups Services Persona
Redialing, Vibrator, Personal Calling Name: Hiroko Niwa
Com- Voice Group: Senior female student in Engineering
Tone, Call Directory, Call Group
muni-
E- E-mail, Face Characters, Image Sign, 1) Personal Profile
cation
mail Copy & Paste, Attachment - Come to school 5 days a week, works part time job at
Contents/ restaurants during weekend
Image(Photo), Video(Movie), Web Access
Multimedia - Study computer science/engineering, and working for
Commerce/ Calculator, Alarm Clock, Schedule, term paper on software engineering
Application Secret Memory, Navigation
- Play tennis once a week
- Working with her personal Web page
5.1.3 Persona Identification and Requirements 2) Pattern of Service Usage
Value Analysis - Daily use of e-mail, browsing the web
(1) Identification of Primary Persona use the phone usually without reading manual
- Buy new phone at every one year and a half
Table 4 summarizes the average usages of user (when boring the capability of current model)
clusters against selected services. The average and - Send/receive some 15 e-mails per day(4lines/e-mail)
SD (Standard Deviation) of each service are also - Call 3 times per day (less than 10 min. per call)
calculated. The statistics implicates the following 3) Specific Interests to the Services
characteristics of service usage. - Easier to write/edit e-mail
Table 4 Usage Value Analysis of Services in 2003 Figure 5 Persona Description
Services ES F ES M PS F PS M Ave. SD (2) Value Analysis of Requirements
Redial 4.41 3.57 3.53 3.93 3.86 0.41
Calculator 3.35 2.43 3.33 2.71 2.96 0.46 From the usage statistics in Table 4 and its radar
Vibrator 4.94 4.93 4.87 4.79 4.88 0.07 chart illustrated in Figure 6, we can identify the
Personal
4.06 2.14 1.53 1.29 2.26 1.26
following types of mobile phone services.
Calling Tone
User Directory 3.59 2.71 2.60 2.71 2.90 0.46 1) Variant Services
Directory Group 4.53 4.14 3.67 3.86 4.05 0.37 In the conjoint statistics, this category is
Alarm Clock 4.82 3.93 3.87 3.93 4.14 0.46
characterized by high standard deviation. It
Scheduler 1.94 3.36 1.53 2.93 2.44 0.85
Secret Memory 3.24 1.29 1.27 1.00 1.70 1.04 includes navigation, receive folder, personal calling
E-mail tone, and e-mail attachment in Table 4.
4.53 2.21 2.67 2.50 2.98 1.05
Attachment
2) Common Services:
E-mail Editor 4.82 2.50 3.20 3.14 3.42 0.99
User Symbols 3.82 3.14 4.93 3.71 3.90 0.75 This category is characterized by high average
Face Character 3.59 4.07 4.87 3.71 4.06 0.58 and low standard deviation. It includes vibrator,
Receive Folder 1.47 4.71 3.40 4.00 3.40 1.39
alarm clock, face character, user symbols, and
Image 3.18 2.50 2.60 2.43 2.68 0.34
Video 1.88 1.29 1.47 1.00 1.41 0.37
redial.
Web 1.24 2.93 3.53 3.07 2.69 1.00 3) Marginal Services
Java App 3.24 2.36 1.67 1.64 2.23 0.75
Navigation 4.53 1.29 1.27 1.00 2.02 1.68 This category is characterized by low average
Total=Coverage 64.0 55.5 55.8 53.4 58.0 - and low standard deviation. It includes movie, and
secret memory.
The total usage value of ES F (Female Student in
Engineering), 64.0, significantly outperforms other

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 Table 6 Clusters of Mobile Phone Services in 2004
Marginal Services
Redial
Redial
55
Service Groups Services
Navigation
Navigation Calculator
Calculator
Common
Redialing, Vibrator, Drive Mode, Call
Jave
Jave App(i-Appli)
App(i-Appli) 44 Vibrator
Vibrator
Services Com- Voice History, Call Hold, Personal Calling Tone,
Web
Web Access
Access
33 Personal
Personal Calling
Calling Tone
Tone muni- Call Directory, Call Group
22 cation E- E-mail, Face Characters, Mail Inquiry,
Movie
Movie 11
User
User Directory
Directory mail Attachment
Contents/
00 Image(Photo), Video(Movie), Web Access
Image
Image Directory
Directory Group
Group Multimedia
Commerce/ Java Application (i-Appli), Navigation,
Receive
Receive Folders
Folders Alarm
Alarm Clock
Clock Application Wallet
ES
ES FF
Face
Face Characters Scheduler
Characters Scheduler
ES
ES MM 5.2.3 Persona Identification and Requirements
Symbols Secret
Secret Memory
Variant Symbols
E-mail
E-mail Copy
Copy &
& Paste
Paste E-mail
Memory
E-mail Attachment
Attachment
PS
PS FF Value Analysis
Services PS
PS MM
(1) Identification of Primary Persona
Figure 6 Three Usage Patterns of Services
Table 7 and Figure 7 show usage interactions
Identified in the Field Study in 2003
between user groups and services. Both female
5.2 Second Field Study in 2004 students in Engineering and Political Studies
represent the highest score of service usage.
5.2.1 Design of Field Study in 2004 Table 7 Usage Value Analysis of Services in 2004
The field study conducted in 2004 is intended to ES E S PS PS BP BP
Services HW
identify the value and hot spots of requirements of F M F M 35+ 35-
3G mobile phones. So, we extended the users Redial 4.40 3.87 4.53 3.80 4.20 3.87 2.93
Call History 4.40 3.80 4.47 4.53 4.53 4.13 2.73
including business people and house wife.
Call Hold 1.20 1.60 1.40 1.67 1.87 1.56 1.33
Face Char. 4.40 4.20 4.80 4.87 1.47 2.47 2.47
5.2.2 Simultaneous Disjoint Clustering of Users Mail Inq. 3.60 2.27 3.87 3.80 1.40 2.93 1.93
and Services Image 3.87 3.73 3.67 2.73 2.00 2.80 1.87
Video 2.60 2.07 2.26 1.67 1.13 1.93 1.00
(1) Clustering Users Web 4.07 3.53 4.33 3.00 1.87 4.00 1.93
We clustered the users into seven groups Java App 2.80 1.67 2.53 2.73 1.20 2.13 1.33
Navigation 1.20 1.13 1.27 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.13
summarized in Table 5. We further classified Vibrator 5.00 4.93 4.27 4.87 4.33 4.20 3.67
business people into two demographic groups by Drive Mode 1.00 1.00 1.27 1.00 1.60 1.00 1.13
the age of 35 since the people under 35 is a Calculator 3.33 2.93 3.13 2.47 1.73 2.80 2.07
generation who familiar with mobile phone since Alarm Clock 4.53 3.80 4.60 3.73 1.67 3.53 2.33
their college life. We included house wife who are Total
46.4 40.5 46.4 41.9 30.0 38.4 27.9
=Coverage
assumed to be less literate in computing in general.

Table 5 Clusters of Participating Users in 2004 In this study, we also intended to know the
preferred services of promising users. Female
Category Male Female Total
Engineering Students 15(ES M) 15(ES F) 30
students are expected to be leading users after
Policy Studies Students 15(PS M) 15(PS F) 30 graduated. So, we decided female students as the
Business (equal or over 35) 15(BP 35+) 15 primary persona, who is composed by female
Business (under 35) 15(BP 35-) 15 students of both Engineering and Political Studies.
House Wife 0 15(HW) 15
Total 105 (2) Value analysis and Hot Spot Analysis
For the primary persona representing the female
(2) Clustering Mobile Phone Services students, we traced the usage scenarios of the
As summarized in Table 6, we follow the same following several use cases of preferred services.
criteria of service categories used in 2003. However, 1) Services for called party including absence,
we included more new and advances services caller identification, and don’t-disturb
provided by only 2.5 G and 3G mobile phones of 2) Enhanced e-mail service, called deco-mail
NTT DoCoMo FOMA [14]. (decoration mail)
3) Wallet services

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 1) Scenario Analysis for Communication Services:
ES
ES Male
Male ES
ES Female
Female PS
PS Male
Male PS
PS Female
Female Case of Deco-mail Service
BP
BP over
over 35
35 BP
BP under
under 35
35 House
House Wife
Wife
Redialing
Redialing
Decoration mail, Deco-mail for short, is an e-mail
Alarm
Alarm Clock
Clock
5.00
5.00
Call
Call History
History
service targeted to young women. User can modify
4.00
4.00 style, fonts and formats of e-mails. Figure 9
Calculator Call
Call Hold
Calculator
3.00
3.00
Hold
Variant illustrates a part of STD (Service Transition
Marginal Services 2.00
2.00 Services Diagram) of Deco-mail service. The percent ratio on
Drive
Drive Mode
Mode 1.00
1.00
Face
Face Characters
Characters the transition indicates the usage ratio elicited
0.00
0.00 from interviews with female students, i.e. primary
Vibrator
Vibrator Mail
Mail Inquiry
Inquiry
persona. Among three usage patterns in Deco-mail
services, we found most of the users prefer only one
Common usage pattern indicated by bold line in Figure 9.
Services Navigation
Navigation Image
Image
The pattern suggests the users prefer to input the
Java
Java Application
Application Video
Video e-mail text first, then to modify the style.
Web
Web

10% Select 10%

Figure 7 Three Usage Patterns of Services in 2004 Decoration Deco
Enter
Text
Type 10%
10%
100% Select 100%
(3) Hot Spot Analysis Decoration Deco End
S0 Type
From the Figure 8, we can identify caller Select 70% Change
identification services are a hot spot to the persona. 90% Range Decoration
70% 90%
70%
Figure 8 illustrates the usage ratio in each Enter Select
Text Deco
category (%) of five services for called party. Among 20% Type
Change 20% Select
them, services of significantly high usage by female Decoration Range
20%

students (ES F and PS F) include absence, and

personal calling tone and personal calling image Figure 9 Service Transition Diagram of Deco-mail
both identifying the caller. This indicates female
students are highly concerning who is the caller. 2) Scenario Analysis for Commerce Services: Case
The set of caller identification services is hot spots of Wallet Service
to the primary persona. On the other hand, speed Wallet service is introduced by a new 3G mobile
dialing with shorthand dial number is very phone, FOMA 901i product line, in 2004 [15]. It can
marginal. This result indicates speed-dialing is be used for payment at the shops and restaurants
replaced by directory service and almost obsolete. where wireless cash registers are available. Since
wallet service can be used at any time in our daily
100.00
ES Male ES Female PS Male life, it’s needed to understand the pattern of one
PS Female BP 35 or Over BP under 35
90.00 House Wife day life style of primary persona. So, we conducted
80.00 interviews with female students to obtain deeper
70.00
and wider characteristics of the persona.
60.00
50.00
40.00 5.2.4 Verify the Field Study in 2003
30.00
20.00
(1) Comparison of Usage Statistics in 2003 and
10.00
2004
0.00 Table 8 summarizes the comparison of two field
Absence Personal Personal Don't Disturb Speed Dialing
Calling Tone Calling Image studies. For fair comparison, we extracted the
statistics of four student groups in 2004, which are
Figure 8 Usage Ratio of Services for Called Party also included in the table.
Figure 10 illustrates snake plots of average
(4) Scenario Analysis service usages over four student groups in 2003
To understand the users’ preference to the and 2004. The two snake plots are closely dancing
services newly provided by 3G mobile phones, we together. So, we can conclude the user’s preference
picked up a few unique service scenarios as follows. to the services is well identified by Hanako method.

Proceedings of the 2005 13th IEEE International Conference on Requirements Engineering (RE’05)
0-7695-2425-7/05 $20.00 © 2005 IEEE
 Table 8 Comparison of Usages in Two Field Studies Almost 50% of non-technical users do not want
(1)2004 more functionality in the mobile phones. Some 20
Services 2004 (2)2003
(Student) (1)-(2) to 50% of them even prefer simpler phones. We
Ave. SD Ave. SD Ave SD believe this is a clear and strong message from
Redial 3.94 0.53 4.15 0.37 3.86 0.41 0.29
users to mobile phone developers.
Call
4.09 0.65 4.30 0.34 NA NA NA
History
Call Hold 1.52 0.22 1.47 0.21 NA NA NA 6. Evaluations and Discussions
Face Char. 3.52 1.36 4.57 0.32 4.06 0.58 0.51
Mail Inq. 2.83 0.98 3.38 0.75 NA NA NA
Image 2.95 0.83 3.50 0.52 2.68 0.34 0.82 (1) Finding Persona with Hanako Method
Video 1.81 0.58 2.15 0.39 1.41 0.37 0.87 From two field studies, it’s revealed Hanako
Web 3.25 1.02 3.73 0.59 2.69 1.00 1.04
method effectively provides a systematic procedure
Java App 2.06 0.66 2.43 0.52 2.23 0.75 0.20
Navigation 1.10 0.11 1.15 0.11 2.02 1.68 -0.87
to identify persona A case of failed application of
Vibrator 4.47 0.49 4.77 0.34 4.88 0.07 -0.11 persona to mass-market identified the problems of
Drive Mode 1.14 0.23 1.07 0.13 NA NA NA lacking of systematic identification of persona and
Calculator 2.64 0.58 2.97 0.37 2.96 0.46 0.01 confusion and conflicted view to the persona [20].
Alarm So, identification of persona is key success factor in
3.46 1.09 4.17 0.46 4.14 0.46 0.03
Clock
Total 38.8 NA 43.8 NA NA NA NA
applying persona.
5.0 (2) Analysis of Requirements Value and Hot Spots
4.5 2004 2003
4.0
3.5 Hanako method is intended to support analysis of
3.0
2.5
2.0
requirements value and its hot spots from the
1.5
1.0 interaction of persona and scenarios. We conducted
0.5
0.0 several case studies, and identified hot spots to
n
l

pp

or
eb
r.

eo

or
e

female students such as caller identification

ck
ia

tio
ha

ag

t
ed

at
W
d

la

lo
ga
C

Vi
Im

br
va

cu
R

C
ce

Vi
av

rm
Ja

al

services based on conventional services. The study

Fa

C
N

la
A

indicates the technique can help to identifying new

Figure 10 Snake Plots of Usages in Two Field Studies value-added services at the hot spots.
(3) Usage of Persona
(2) Comparison of General User Preference
During the field studies in 2003 and 2004, four
Figure 11 illustrates statistics of average
students applied persona. After identified persona,
preference to the functionality/complexity of mobile
they frequently call the name of persona, such as
phone services extracted from the field studies in
Hiroko Niwa described in Figure 5, to indicate
2003 and 2004. Both statistics indicate the very
specific category of users. It provides a concrete and
similar attitude of users.
comprehensive archetype of users. However, since
More Functionality Just Right Simpler Other its impact is so strong, it may introduce a risk to
misunderstand some aspects of the users.
PS Female

(4) Limitation and Problems Remains

PS Male

The conjoint analysis has some limitation. It’s

ES Female
based on heuristics approach with support of
ES Male
statistical techniques. So, a repository system of
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
past experience will be helpful. We are considering
a repository system to collect usage statistics.
More Functionality Just Right Simpler Other
House Wife
(5) Feedback from the Developers
Business under 35 In January 2005, the author conducted a half-day
Business over 35
workshop on the field study with some 15 people
PS Fem ale
working for planning and development of mobile
PS Male
phones at Fujitsu. Some statistics and findings are
ES Fem ale

ES Male
impressive and striking. However, the statistics
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% alone do not provide enough messages to the
developers. In some cases, we need to formulate
more concrete opinions from users.
Figure 11 Preference to the Mobile Phone Services

Proceedings of the 2005 13th IEEE International Conference on Requirements Engineering (RE’05)
0-7695-2425-7/05 $20.00 © 2005 IEEE
 7. Conclusions
We proposed Hanako method of persona-
scenario-based requirements analysis methodology
combining with conjoint analysis. We demonstrated
the effectiveness of Hanako method through two
field studies with more than 150 users to the
services of mobile phone product lines. We gained
various new insights into both users and services,
which are not recognized before. We believe the
proposed methodology contributes to requirements
engineering in the domains of software embedded
in digital consumer products.
Requirements engineering for digital consumer
products is challenging. Similar problems will arise
in automotive [26], Web [6], and other areas [1, 22].
We are looking at the application of Hanako
method to such area, and get the feedback to
improving Hanako method.
Acknowledgements
The author thanks to Ms. Kaoru Murase and Ms. Yumi
Nakano for conducting a field study in 2003, and Ms.
Naoko Kurita and Ms. Yuki Ogino for that in 2004. The
author also thanks to Mr. Yoshiiku Hanai and Mr.
Katsuaki Akama for their support to the field study in
2004. This research is partly supported by Fujitsu
Limited under the contract UM-44150480.
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