Software Engineering for Qualitative Data Workflows: An ethnographic Approach. From qualitative interview transcripts to FAIR research data through collaborative requirement engineering.

The presentation outlines the results of collaborative, ethnographic field and qualitative interview research with a grounded-theory-based requirement engineering and design process. This process marks the first phase of an iterative research software engineering project, which will continue with software development and collaborative user-testing. The initial requirement engineering has yielded requirements, a traceability map, and potential use cases, as well as insights into methodological approaches for research software engineering. In the process, requirements were re-contextualized to their foundational data, including field notes and interview transcripts through a traceability mapping, providing insights for use case development, feasibility, and software design. Mapping facilitates both forward and backward traceability throughout the iterative software development process, serving as a key quality criterion in software engineering. The rich context data in connection with requirement statements facilitate the development of software use cases that integrate existing research practices with existing technological solutions.