UX requirements engineering for COSE platforms. A cultural perspective

Abstract

Cultural factors significantly influence both Requirements Engineering (RE) and Human–Computer Interaction (HCI), affecting how software requirements are elicited, specified, and translated into usable and useful interfaces. Despite this, existing research offers limited guidance on how to systematically integrate cultural insights into software engineering artifacts. Our approach combines conceptual mapping and practical prototyping to operationalize cultural insights into testable software requirements. In this work, we turn to Community-Oriented Sharing Economy (COSE) initiatives (e.g., makerspaces, food cooperatives, and libraries of things) as a case study to apply the proposed method. To frame the investigation, we reviewed major cultural frameworks and selected Hofstede’s Theory of Cultural Dimensions [26] as the primary lens. We then mapped these cultural insights onto Bødker et al.’s affordance framework [9], given their role in supporting user participation and trust in COSE. As a main contribution, we present a method to translate cultural insights into Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) scenarios. We illustrate our approach through a practical example, which includes scenarios in the Gherkin language, visual interface representations, and step definitions in Python. These examples demonstrate how cultural actors can be converted into functional and testable requirements, supporting culture-sensitive software design. Additionally, the method helps improve communication between design and development teams by connecting user experience (UX) insights with technical requirements.