Virtual world tools for Requirements Engineering

Virtual environments are digital scenes which are now widely familiar to home game players and movie goers. The power of conveying ideas and experiences through realistic 3D presentations is well established, and interactivity with objects and other digital participants is the basis for success in achieving common goals and increasing outcomes such as scores. This experience builds on analogues from military war rooms and childhood role playing with plastic toys and board games. Building a more comprehensive world with deeper "real-i ness" such as physics, voice chat, and ownership has provided a platform for much richer presence and communal development of ideas and services. Virtual Worlds (VWs) have proven their value in marketing, meetings, and education, with steady adoption and penetration into business sectors. A natural extension of this power is in Requirements Definition. Beyond presenting a proposal for experimentation in this vein, this paper proposes that these three-dimensional immersive environments will inevitably become an intrinsic and expected part of processes where product and service requirements are derived and evaluated.