Requirements Perception Gap across Stakeholders: A Comparative Survey of Aged Care Digital Health Software
For developers and researchers of aged care digital health software, this work highlights misaligned priorities that can inform co-design and product decisions.
This study identifies a 'Requirements Gap' between software developers and end-users (older adults and caregivers) in aged care digital health software: developers prioritize advanced features and overestimate user satisfaction with non-functional requirements, while users value simplicity and reliability. The gap analysis is based on a mixed-methods survey of 249 participants.
We sought to explore and compare the perspectives of three key stakeholder groups: older adults, caregivers (formal health providers and informal caregivers), and digital health software developers on key functional and non-functional requirements. We conducted a survey, designed based on the findings from an existing systematic review, to gather and analyse data related to the three stakeholder groups' (dis)satisfaction with current aged care digital health software and their views on key future aged care software requirements. A mixed-methods survey approach integrated quantitative questionnaire data and qualitative open-ended responses from a total sample of 249, comprised of older adults (103), formal and informal caregivers (41), and software developers (105). Data analysis utilised a mixed methods approach, employing inferential statistics to compare group satisfaction levels and thematic analysis for qualitative open-ended responses. Our analysis reveals a significant "Requirements Gap". Software developers tend to prioritise advanced features and functional requirements, significantly overestimating user satisfaction with core NFRs such as ease of use and responsiveness. Conversely, developers were more critical of existing functional features compared to older adults and caregivers, who prioritised simplicity and reliability over feature density. By combining quantitative and qualitative analysis, we identified where stakeholder priorities align and where they diverge across functional and non-functional requirements in both the current designs they used and the future designs they desire. Our findings present a stakeholder gap analysis that can guide future co-design processes, near-term product decisions, and privacy-by-design recommendations in aged care digital health.