Journal of Software Engineering and Applications, 2013, 6, 416-425
http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/jsea.2013.68051 Published Online August 2013 (http://www.scirp.org/journal/jsea)
Quality Requirements for Multimedia Interactive
Informative Systems
Sylviane Levy
1
, Fernando Gamboa
2
1
Dirección General de Cómputo y de Tecnologías de Información y Comunicación, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México,
México D.F., México;
2
Centro de Ciencias Aplicadas y Desarrollo Tecnológico, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México,
México D.F., México.
Email: sylviane@unam.mx
Received May 28
th
, 2013; revised June 30
th
, 2013; accepted July 8
th
, 2013
Copyright © 2013 Sylviane Levy, Fernando Gamboa. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attri-
bution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly
cited.
ABSTRACT
Multimedia Interactive Informative Systems (MIIS) are software applications resulting from the convergence of multi-
ples technologies such as audiovisual, computing and communication. They aim to transmit information to a large, di-
verse and dispersed public. As with other mass media, the fulfillment of MIIS goals depends largely on the quality of
communication between the system and end users. Therefore, those systems should be developed in order to ensure that
this quality requirement is satisfied. If MIIS are constructed according to usual software engineering practices, the ana-
lysis discipline of the development process includes requirements identification and specification; however, these tech-
niques are focused on functional requirements, and they do not give much importance to non-functional requirements.
In this paper, we propose a development process based on the production of videogames which has two different phases:
preproduction and production. The first phase, corresponding to requirements identification, derives into the concept of
system. In order to translate this concept into a specification, we propose the use of new communicational attributes and
a MIIS metamodel. The establishment of MIIS non-functional specification is the result of analyzing class diagrams
through quality attributes. In order to evaluate if the specifications are responding to communicational attributes, a
functional prototype is built and evaluated with end users. The proposed methodology is applied to a real case study.
Keywords: Multimedia Interactive Informative Systems; Multimedia; Quality Model in Use; Quality Requirements;
Metamodeling
1. Introduction
Multimedia Interactive Informative Systems (MIIS) are
software systems that result from the convergence of
multiple technologies, for example the combination of
computational, audiovisual and communication techno-
logies. The purpose of MIIS is to diffuse information to a
large, dispersed, diverse, and non-captive public. An ex-
ample of a MIIS would be a website whose goal is to
transmit information, such as an online newspaper or a
cultural website. A kiosk in a museum, cultural CD-
ROMS, and many applications for mobile phones and
tablets can also be considered as MIIS.
As with other communication media, such as cinema
and television, whether or not the MIIS fulfill its goals
depends largely on quality characteristics related to the
communication between the transmitter and the receiver.
In this case, the qualities of communication between the
MIIS and its final users are essential, and the success of
the MIIS depends on the user finding these systems at-
tractive, interesting, informative, and credible. However,
these quality requirements are not included among the
attributes of quality models used for software such as the
ISO/IEC norm 25010 [1] and its predecessor ISO/IEC
9126.
These types of non-functional requirements are diffi-
cult to translate into specifications. But if they are not
satisfied, the user can discard the application with the
same freedom that she or he can change the channel of
the television or leave a cinema when the film is disap-
pointing, rendering the system essentially useless.
Existing models of quality barely consider these char-
acteristics. Software applications traditionally help cap-
tive users to solve concrete problems, and there is no
need for retaining their interest. The MIIS’s user, on the
Copyright © 2013 SciRes. JSEA