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Short abstract:

The contribution aims to explore the role of qualitative research methods in research software engineering with a focus on contextual inquiry as a collaborative approach of user-centric research software engineering specifically. It draws from a PhD research project that makes use of the approach.

Long abstract:

As our research processes become more digital under the paradigm of open research and open data, there is an increased demand for research software tailored to support these processes (RfII 2023). Even though software engineering has traditionally relied upon methodologies from the fields of humanities and social sciences in steps in the software development process such as requirement elicitation and usability research (Dybå et al 2011), researchers from these fields are largely underrepresented in the area of research software engineering (RSE, Philippe et al 2019). As a collaborative user-centric approach, contextual inquiry (CI, Raven and Flanders 1996) not only incorporates methodologies from humanities and social sciences, if applied to RSE, it allows researchers from these fields to play an integral part in developing specific research software.

This contribution aims to explore the role of qualitative research methods in RSE generally, and CI as a collaborative approach of user-centric RSE specifically. It draws from an ongoing PhD research project that in itself makes use of CI within RSE in digital humanities and qualitative research processes.

References:

RfII. (2023). RfII-Bericht „Föderierte Dateninfrastrukturen für die wissenschaftliche Nutzung“.

Dybå, Prikladnicki, Rönkkö, Seaman, Sillito, (2011). Qualitative research in software engineering. 425-429.

Raven, Flanders, A. (1996). Using contextual inquiry. 1-13.

Philippe, Hammitzsch, Janosch, van der Walt, van Werkhoven, Hettrick, Katz, Leinweber, Gesing, Druskat, Henwwergood, May, Lohani, Sinha, (2019). Softwaresaved/international-survey (2018-v.1.0.2).