Alana Paula Barbosa Mota

Design Thinking techniques have been widely used in software requirements elicitation to understand the necessities of stakeholders and end‐users. However, there is a lack of evidence of their effectiveness when applied to guide the development process of a system targeting vulnerable populations. What are the implications of using Design Thinking techniques to elicit requirements in a community of former inmates—and what would be the benefits of and challenges in this deployment? In this paper, we report our experience of using Design Thinking for requirements elicitation of a mobile application customized for the former inmates of the Brazilian prison system and their families. We applied techniques such as Brainstorming, Stakeholder Mapping, Personas Creation, Rapid Ethnography, and Interviews to obtain relevant data and create several prototypes. These techniques contribute to the development of an uncommon application that aims to help the reintegration process of former inmates into society. Our results validate the initial hypothesis that such techniques, when applied to a sensitive context, assist product development that meets the end‐users' needs by creating a higher quality product. The main limitation of the research was the lack of access to low‐literacy end‐users and/or former inmates without previous experience using mobile devices.

Context/motivation: Design Thinking techniques have been widely used in software requirements elicitation to understand the necessities of stakeholders and end-users. However, there is a lack of evidence of their effectiveness when applied to vulnerable populations. Question/problem: What are the implications of using Design Thinking techniques to elicit requirements in a community of former inmates - and what would be the benefits of and challenges in this deployment? Principal ideas/results: In this paper, we report our experience of using Design Thinking for Requirements Elicitation of a mobile application, customized for the former inmates of the Brazilian Prison System and their families. Research methods: We applied techniques such as Brainstorming, Stakeholder Mapping, Personas Creation, Rapid Ethnography, and Interviews to obtain relevant data and create several prototypes. Contribution: These techniques contribute to the development of an uncommon application that aims to help the reintegration process of former inmates into society. Our results validate the initial hypothesis that such techniques, when applied to a sensitive context, assist product development that meets the end-users needs by creating a higher-quality product. Limitations: The main limitation of the research was the lack of access to low-literacy end-users and former inmates without previous experience using mobile devices.

Context and motivation: Design Thinking techniques have been widely used in the elicitation of software requirements, since such methods obtain satisfying results when applied to understand the necessities of both stakeholders and end-users. However, there is a lack of evidence on their effectiveness when applied to populations considered vulnerable. Question/problem: What are the implications of using Design Thinking techniques to elicit requirements in a community of former inmates - and what would be the benefits of and challenges in this deployment? Principal ideas/results: In this paper, we report our experience on using Design Thinking for Requirements Elicitation of a mobile application, customized for a vulnerable population: the former inmates of the Brazilian Prison System and their families. Research approach and methodology: We utilized the d.school Design Thinking method during our research. Techniques such as Brainstorming, Stakeholder Mapping, Personas Creation, Rapid Ethnography, and Interviews were used to obtain relevant data. Furthermore, during the development process, several prototypes were created. Contribution: The use of these techniques generated important contributions for the development of an uncommon application that aims to help the reintegration process of former inmates into society. The results obtained validate the initial hypothesis that such techniques, even when applied to a sensitive context such as this one, assist in the development of a product that meets the needs of the end-users by creating a higher quality product. Limitations of results: The main limitation of the research was the lack of access to low literacy end-users and/or former inmates without previous experience using mobile devices.

In order to guarantee the privacy of users’ data, the Brazilian government created the Brazilian General Data Protection Law (LGPD). This article made a diagnostic of Brazilian organizations in relation to their suitability for LGPD, based on the perception of Information Technology (IT) practitioners who work in these organizations. We used a survey with 41 questions to diagnose different Brazilian organizations, both public and private. The diagnostic questionnaire was answered by 105 IT practitioners. The results show that 27% of organizations process personal data of public access based on good faith and LGPD principles. In addition, our findings also revealed that 16.3% of organizations have not established a procedure or methodology to verify that the LGPD principles are being respected during the development of services that will handle personal data from the product or service design phase to its execution and 20% of the organizations did not establish a communication process to the personal data holders, regarding the possible data breaches. The result of the diagnostic allows organizations and data users to have an overview of how the treatment of personal data of their customers is being treated and which points of attention are in relation to the principles of LGPD.