Characterizing Efficacy of Alternative Media for Requirements Expression

Requirements are most commonly expressed in natural language, but alternative media can be employed. Previous research has established the viability of model diagrams and engineering drawings for requirements expression. To move beyond viability, three (3) factors—Cognition, Quality, and Accountability—were developed to assess the potential impact of using alternate media requirement expressions in systems engineering. The alternate media candidates were evaluated against the factors and their subfactors, which determined that the inclusion of alternate media may be expected to positively impact requirements expression in all three areas. For Cognition, improved communication is predicted as alternate media are situationally preferable based on their inherent context offerings and systematically shorter comprehension times for spatial information, which potentially reduces the cognitive burden on the reader. For Quality, alternate media are predicted to improve the appropriateness of requirement expressions within a specification. For Accountability, improvement is predicted within a project as alternate media can mitigate ambiguity, improve feasibility, and enhance verification and validation efforts. The contribution of this research is the establishment of a conceptual basis for creating multi-media requirement documentation that amplifies the desired characteristics of requirement expressions to better communicate stakeholder information.