Eliciting and modeling emotional requirements: a systematic mapping review

Context

Considering users’ emotions plays an extremely crucial role in the adoption and acceptance of recent technology by the end user. User emotions can also help to identify unknown requirements, saving resources that would otherwise be wasted if discovered later. However, eliciting and modeling users’ emotional requirements in software engineering is still an open research area.

Objective

This systematic mapping review analyzes emotional requirements (ER) practices in software engineering from two perspectives: elicitation and modeling. For elicitation techniques, we investigate the techniques, evaluation methods, limitations, and application domains. For modeling techniques, we examine the modeling languages, analyses, limitations, and domains.

Method

We systematically reviewed studies on emotional requirements engineering published between 1993–2023 and identified 46 relevant primary studies.

Results

A total of 34 studies investigated ER elicitation techniques, five examined modeling techniques, and seven covered both. Illustrative case studies were the main evaluation method for proposed elicitation techniques. Identified limitations include time consumption and extensive human involvement. The dominant application domains were healthcare and well-being, and game development.

Conclusion

This review summarizes the current landscape of emotional requirements research, highlighting key elicitation and modeling techniques, evaluations, limitations, and domains. Further research can build on these findings to advance emotional requirements practices in software engineering. Future research may address (1) managing conflicting emotional requirements across users, (2) evaluating the value and impact of considering emotional requirements during the development and (3) Modeling and analyzing emotional requirements in relation to other requirements.