Beyond bugs and features. Analyzing user feedback through the lens of the sustainability awareness framework
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Publication date
2026
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04B - Conference paper
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Proceedings 2026 IEEE 34th International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE)
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Pages / Duration
510-517
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IEEE
Place of publication / Event location
Montreal
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Abstract
Crowd-based Requirements Engineering (CrowdRE) has shown that user feedback - both explicit (e.g., app store reviews) and implicit (e.g., usage patterns, telemetry) - can drive requirements elicitation. Yet, user feedback has not been systematically analyzed for sustainability-relevant information. Software systems have far-reaching sustainability effects spanning environment, society, individuals, economy, and technical longevity. The Sustainability Awareness Framework (SusAF) supports anticipating these effects but currently relies on expert-driven workshops in early development. We bridge these streams by asking: can user feedback serve as a source for sustainability-aware requirements engineering (RE)? We present a coding guidebook that operationalizes SusAF's dimensions for user feedback analysis and report results from an exploratory deductive content analysis of 951 app store reviews across three applications. Three to six human coders manually coded 100-review subsets from two applications, while two Large Language Models (LLMs) classified all reviews. Our findings show that, in our dataset, user feedback contains sustainabilityrelevant information across four SusAF dimensions - individual, social, economic, and technical - while environmental sustainability is underexposed (for now). Effects vary across application domains. A preliminary evaluation of two LLMs shows promising performance, with the potential to approach human inter-rater agreement. We outline a research agenda toward making sustainability awareness actionable within RE practices.
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Event
2026 IEEE 34th International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE)
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Conference start date
17.08.2026
Conference end date
21.08.2026
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ISBN
979-8-3315-4851-3
979-8-3315-4852-0
979-8-3315-4852-0
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Language
English
Created during FHNW affiliation
Yes
Strategic action fields FHNW
Publication status
Published
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peer-reviewed
Open access category
Closed
Citation
Seyff, N., Hauri, J., Patkar, N., Groen, E. C., & Bartels, N. (2026). Beyond bugs and features. Analyzing user feedback through the lens of the sustainability awareness framework. Proceedings 2026 IEEE 34th International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE), 510–517. https://doi.org/10.1109/re68928.2026.00053