A Comparison of Questionnaire-Based and 
GUI-Based Requirements Gathering






Software development includes gathering information about 
tasks, work practices and design options from 
users. Traditionally requirements gathering takes two forms. 
Interviews and Participatory Design (PD) practices gather 
rich information about the task and the 
domain but require face-to-face communication between the 
software engineers and the users. When such 
communication is not possible traditional software engineering 
frequently relies on questionnaires and other paper-based 
methods. Unfortunately, questionnaires often fail to capture 
implicit aspects of user tasks that may 
be identified through one-on-one interactions. This project 
investigates a method of gathering requirements whereby 
users, working independent of software engineers, construct 
rough interfaces augmented with textual argumentation. Our 
initial study has compared the use of 
GRC with questionnaire-based requirements gathering.