Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Psychology / Richard J. Harris / Systems that support or require human interaction are generally easier to learn, use, and remember when their organization is consistent with the user’s knowledge and experiences (Norman, 1983; Roske-Hofstrand & Paap, 1986). Thus, in order for interface designers to truly design for the user, they must first have a way of deriving a representation of what the user knows about the domain of interest. The current study evaluated three techniques for eliciting knowledge structures for how General Aviation pilots think about weather information. Weather was chosen because of its varying implications for pilots of different levels of experience. Two elicitation techniques (Relationship Judgment and Card Sort) asked pilots to explicitly consider the relationship between 15 weather-related information concepts. The third technique, Prime Recognition Task, used response times and priming to implicitly reflect the strength of relationship between concepts in semantic memory. Techniques were evaluated in terms of pilot performance, conceptual structure validity, and required resources for employment. Validity was assessed in terms of the extent to which each technique identified differences in organization of weather information among pilots of different experience levels. Multidimensional scaling was used to transform proximity data collected by each technique into conceptual structures representing the relationship between concepts. Results indicated that Card Sort was the technique that most consistently tapped into knowledge structure affected by experience. Only conceptual structures based on Card Sort data were able to be used to both discriminate between pilots of different experience levels and accurately classify experienced pilots as “experienced”. Additionally, Card Sort was the most efficient and effective technique to employ in terms of preparation time, time on task, flexibility, and face validity. The Card Sort provided opportunities for deliberation, revision, and visual feedback that allowed the pilots to engage in a deeper level of processing at which experience may play a stronger role. Relationship Judgment and Prime Recognition Task characteristics (e.g., time pressure, independent judgments) may have motivated pilots to rely on a more shallow or text-based level of processing (i.e., general semantic meaning) that is less affected by experience. Implications for menu structure design and assessment are discussed.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the performance of adults with traumatic brain injury (TBI) on a spoken persuasive discourse task and to evaluate the affects of eliciting this language sample. Ten adults with TBI (mean age = 51 years and 5 months) and ten adults matched by age and gender completed two spoken language tasks. These tasks required them to verbally provide their opinion of whether trained animals in circuses should be allowed to perform for the public and also whether public transport should be encouraged for everyone to use. One of the tasks was provided with examples for and against the topic within the instructions whereas the other task instructions provided no examples. The presentation of these tasks was alternated within the groups so as not to assist with task practice. Language measures included productivity (total number of words, mean length of T-units, T-units per minute and percentage of T-units with mazes) and complexity (total number of clauses, clause density and clause type). Pragmatic measures included the essential features of argument as identified in the developmental literature (number of claims, reasons, elaborations, repetitions, irrelevancies, and presence of an introduction and conclusion). The TBI group out-performed their age-matched peers on language complexity measures of total number of clauses and independent clauses used, however used significantly more adverbial clauses. On comparison of the elicitation technique, the instructions with examples elicited a significantly greater number of reasons than that of the basic instructions. The results are discussed alongside current literature in the field of discourse production and persuasion. Implications for clinical practice and future directions for research in this area are also suggested.

Context: In the requirements engineering phase, requirements elicitation is considered as the most important task as it is the initial phase in which the requirements are gathered and prioritised. Changes in requirements may lead to project failure or delay in project deliveries. So, it is essential to elicit the requirements at the early stage to avoid changes in requirements in the later stage of development. Therefore, there is a need to study the impact of volatility in elicitation techniques to gather requirements appropriately in the early stages. Objectives: In the present thesis, we focused on the analysis of the requirements volatility in the requirement elicitation phase. The main objectives we have formulated to achieve our goal are Objective 1: To identify and determine the various causes of requirement volatility. Objective 2: To examine the impact of requirement volatility in the requirement elicitation process. Objective 3: To examine whether the procedure of elicitation techniques differ if volatility occurs while eliciting the requirements. Methods: In this thesis, we have implemented a Systematic Literature Review(SLR) and Survey research methods in order to attain our aim and objectives. SLR is performed for objective 1, to receive the data about the causes of volatility in various development life cycle phases. A survey is conducted to identify the causes of volatility in all phases of development, in the elicitation phase, and check whether the process of elicitation techniques differ if volatility occurs while eliciting the requirements. Results: From the SLR and survey, numerous factors of causes of volatility on the software development lifecycle were identified. Several new factors were identified from both the research methods. The factors have its own interpretation for the cause of volatility. Moreover, from the survey results, we can determine that the volatility occurs in the elicitation phase and has a huge impact while eliciting the requirements. Most of the practitioners working with the agile development process and waterfall model have stated that the impact of volatility results in prolonging the elicitation phase, slowing down the project, etc. Conclusions: For this research, our contribution is to provide insights on the impact of volatility in the elicitation process and check whether the elicitation techniques and its process change due to volatility. Based on the results of the respondents, we can conclude that the elicitation techniques procedure change is not intentional and not only because of the volatility but also due to some external factors while eliciting the requirements.