Abstract
[Context & Motivation] App store reviews are a rich source for analysts to elicit requirements from user feedback, for they describe bugs to be fixed, requested features, and possible improvements. Product development teams need new techniques that help them make real-time decisions based on user feedback. [Question/Problem] Researchers have proposed natural language processing (NLP) techniques for extracting and organizing requirements-relevant knowledge from the reviews for one specific app. However, no attention has been paid to studying whether and how requirements can be identified from competing products. [Principal ideas/results] We propose RE-SWOT, a tool-supported method for eliciting requirements from app store reviews through competitor analysis. RE-SWOT combines NLP algorithms with information visualization techniques. We evaluate the usefulness of RE-SWOT with expert product managers from three mobile app companies. [Contribution] Our preliminary results show that competitor analysis is a promising path for research that has direct impact on the requirements engineering practice in modern app development companies.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Bano, M., Zowghi, D.: A systematic review on the relationship between user involvement and system success. Inf. Softw. Technol. 58, 148–169 (2015)
Berry, D.: Natural language and requirements engineering–nu? In: International Workshop on Requirements Engineering (2001)
Bourque, P., Fairley, R.E.: Guide to the software engineering body of knowledge (SWEBOK (R)): version 3.0. IEEE Computer Society Press (2014)
Chen, N., Lin, J., Hoi, S.C.H., Xiao, X., Zhang, B.: AR-miner: mining informative reviews for developers from mobile app marketplace. In: Proceedings of ICSE, pp. 767–778 (2014)
Cooper Jr., J.R., Lee, S.W., Gandhi, R.A., Gotel, O.: Requirements engineering visualization: a survey on the state-of-the-art. Proceedings of REV, pp. 46–55 (2009)
Dalpiaz, F., van der Schalk, I., Brinkkemper, S., Aydemir, F.B., Lucassen, G.: Detecting terminological ambiguity in user stories: tool and experimentation. Inf. Softw. Technol. (2019). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infsof.2018.12.007
Di Sorbo, A., et al.: What would users change in my app? Summarizing app reviews for recommending software changes. In: Proceedings of FSE, pp. 499–510 (2016)
Fu, B., Lin, J., Li, L., Faloutsos, C., Hong, J., Sadeh, N.: Why people hate your app: making sense of user feedback in a mobile app store. In: Proceedings of SIGKDD, pp. 1276–1284 (2013)
Gao, C., Wang, B., He, P., Zhu, J., Zhou, Y., Lyu, M.R.: PAID: prioritizing app issues for developers by tracking user reviews over versions. In: Proceedings of ISSRE, pp. 35–45 (2016)
Genc-Nayebi, N., Abran, A.: A systematic literature review: opinion mining studies from mobile app store user reviews. J. Syst. Softw. 125, 207–219 (2017)
Groen, E.C., et al.: The crowd in requirements engineering: the landscape and challenges. IEEE Softw. 34(2), 44–52 (2017)
Guzman, E., Maalej, W.: How do users like this feature? A fine grained sentiment analysis of app reviews. In: Proceedings of RE, pp. 153–162 (2014)
Harman, M., Jia, Y., Zhang, Y.: App store mining and analysis: MSR for app stores. In: Proceedings of MSR, pp. 108–111 (2012)
Hill, T., Westbrook, R.: SWOT analysis: it’s time for a product recall. Long Range Plann. 30(1), 46–52 (1997)
Hosseini, M., Phalp, K., Taylor, J., Ali, R.: Towards crowdsourcing for requirements engineering. In: Proceedings of REFSQ, pp. 82–87 (2014)
Jin, J., Ji, P., Gu, R.: Identifying comparative customer requirements from product online reviews for competitor analysis. Eng. Appl. Artif. Intell. 49, 61–73 (2016)
Johann, T., Maalej, W.: Democratic mass participation of users in Requirements Engineering? In: Proceedings of RE, pp. 256–261 (2015)
Kabbedijk, J., Brinkkemper, S., Jansen, S., van der Veldt, B.: Customer involvement in requirements management: lessons from mass market software development. In: Proceedings of RE, pp. 281–286 (2009)
Keertipati, S., Savarimuthu, B.T.R., Licorish, S.A.: Approaches for prioritizing feature improvements extracted from app reviews. In: Proceedings of EASE, pp. 1–6 (2016)
Maalej, W., Nabil, H.: Bug report, feature request, or simply praise? On automatically classifying app reviews. In: Proceedings of RE, pp. 116–125 (2015)
Maalej, W., Nayebi, M., Johann, T., Ruhe, G.: Towards data-driven requirements engineering. IEEE Softw. 33, 1–6 (2015)
Pagano, D., Maalej, W.: User feedback in the AppStore: an empirical study. In: Proceedings of RE, pp. 125–134 (2013)
Panichella, S., Di Sorbo, A., Guzman, E., Visaggio, C.A., Canfora, G., Gall, H.C.: How can I improve my app? Classifying user reviews for software maintenance and evolution. In: Proceedings of ICSME 2015, pp. 281–290 (2015)
Parente, M.G.: Using NLP and information visualization to analyze app reviews. Master’s thesis, Utrecht University, the Netherlands (2018). https://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/368082
Pfitzner, D., Hobbs, V., Powers, D.: A unified taxonomic framework for information visualization. In: Proceedings of APVis (2003)
Reddivari, S., Rad, S., Bhowmik, T., Cain, N., Niu, N.: Visual requirements analytics: a framework and case study. Requir. Eng. 19(3), 257–279 (2014)
Shneiderman, B.: The eyes have it: a task by data type taxonomy for information visualizations. In: Proceedings of VL/HCC, pp. 336–343 (1996)
Srivastava, P.K., Sharma, R.: Crowdsourcing to elicit requirements for MyERP application. In: Proceedings of CrowdRE, pp. 31–35 (2015)
Weihrich, H.: The TOWS matrix–a tool for situational analysis. Long Range Plan. 15(2), 54–66 (1982)
Wohlin, C., Runeson, P., Höst, M., Ohlsson, M.C., Regnell, B., Wesslén, A.: Experimentation in Software Engineering. Springer, Heidelberg (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-29044-2
Yang, H., Liang, P.: Identification and classification of requirements from app user reviews. In: Proceedings of SEKE, pp. 7–12 (2015)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Dalpiaz, F., Parente, M. (2019). RE-SWOT: From User Feedback to Requirements via Competitor Analysis. In: Knauss, E., Goedicke, M. (eds) Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality. REFSQ 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11412. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15538-4_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15538-4_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-15537-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-15538-4
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)