ICS 121: Gathering User Needs

User needs is an organized list of the things that users and other stakeholders say that they need or want.
- E.g., users say that they want TurboTax to help them save money.
- Users are just one group of stakeholders
- A more precise term would be "stakeholder needs and wants"
User needs are one important input to the requirements for a new software system. But they are not the only input. Others include: competitive or marketing requirements, law and industry standards, technical constraints, requirements proposed by the development team.

Talk to the stakeholders:
- One-on-one structured interviews
- Focus groups and marketing surveys
- Ongoing communications
Watch what they actually do (regardless of what they say they do)
Put yourself in their shoes
Have them react to mockups:
- Wizard-of-oz mockups
- Paper or html mockups
- Early prototypes
Work through the implications of what you have learned, discover derived requirements and determine if the customer sees the same needs.
Not all needs have the same priority. What does the customer really need most? What would they be willing to pay for? What is merely nice-to-have?

Who they are
- Identify who the real stakeholders are
- What type of user are they: experience, special needs
What they want to do
- List things that the user wants to be able to do
- Write user stories giving concrete examples of how a user might use the system