Where do great requirements come from? Technological advancements in the form of amazing new software features, disruptive innovations, emerging new fields such as the Internet of Things and smart ecosystems, and radical enhancements to existing software all rely on one thing: innovative ideas that reinvent the work context, process or experience. However, most requirements elicitation techniques help to identify only the basic requirements that an IT system should fulfill or conservative ideas for the incremental improvement of a system, all with little innovation potential.
Creativity is needed to identify delighter requirements, which make aspects of the new system a real positive surprise. Methods such as Design Thinking employ creativity to develop new innovative products and innovate improvements on existing products. With the progress of Artificial Intelligence (AI), innovative ways of the team of AI and humans can create new ideas jointly. The CreaRE workshop provides a platform for introducing, discussing and elaborating on ways to be creative for RE.
Many practical questions are still open, especially concerning the applicability and reliability of these techniques in different contexts or the completeness and post-processing of the requirements resulting from a creativity session. Different software applications domains may require creativity techniques to be applied differently. Meanwhile, the field of creativity techniques itself is also changing as tool support and trends like AI and multimedia use with creativity techniques, ubiquitous computing, and online participation demand different approaches, which provides new opportunities for involving creativity in RE but also introduces new challenges.