Investigando o uso da netnografia como meio de levantamento de dados para a geração de personas e elicitação de requisitos para sistemas com foco em pessoas com transtorno do espectro autista: um estudo de caso.

Abstract

The early stages of software development need a good understanding of its target audience. To understand this audience, user-centered studies are conducted. Conventional methods for carrying out these studies are costly and researchers are dependent of the target audience interest. In Brazil there are around two million autistic people geographically distributed, for this we saw the need to bring these user-centered studies to the online environment. This research reports the application of a netnography, an online ethnography, which has a reduced cost when compared to conventional ethnography and allows reaching a dispersed target audience, as is the case with autistic individuals. This netnography was applied using the Instagram social network to support data collection to delineate user profiles of accessible systems that have as target users people affected by Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and to elicit requirements from these profiles. Two methodologies were used to extract the data: profiles analysis and questionnaires, both of them applied after the the selected people consent. With the data obtained, personas and requirements were generated. Instagram has proven to be a great source of data for research with users with ASD, motivating to extend to other audiences.