Use Cases and Requirements review

Dear Working Group Members,

Olivier Thereaux and I have recently been engaged in redrafting the Use Cases and Requirements document.

The document had its origins in the January 2012 face-to-face meeting. At the time, its chief purpose was to capture and rank a set of rough use cases and feature areas to help guide and compare the candidate specs.  At this time, though, it feels to us that the group's work is better served by a different document, one which complements the current specification.

Our main goals in reworking the document have been as follows:

- Paint a broad picture of the audio-enabled web, illustrating its value through plain-language scenarios readable by a non-technical audience
- Frame some of the valuable comments and observations made by WG and list members in terms of user stories
- Build a portfolio of scenarios which, taken together, generate a comprehensive set of requirements and goals
- Develop these goals with reference to user needs, rather than particular APIs and architectures
- Connect requirements to real features in the Web Audio API, where they exist
- Highlight gaps in the API where requirements rely on features that are not supported

At this time we feel that the document is ready for a broader review and welcome your input.  If we are able to process feedback in the next several weeks, we could publish this document as a Working Draft. That seems desirable for keeping the our momentum going.

Please find the latest version of the document here:

    https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/audio/raw-file/tip/reqs/Overview.html

As a side note, the set of scenarios is not intended to be universal and all-inclusive. Rather, our goal has been to collect a manageable number of scenarios that overlap to cover as wide an area as possible: many application domains and many API requirements. In so doing, we have often chosen to combine a number of smaller use cases into a single larger one. We also sometimes eliminated use cases that, despite their interest, did not add a novel element to the overall picture.

Thanks to everyone whose input has made this document possible.

Best regards,

... .  .    .       Joe

Joe Berkovitz
President

Noteflight LLC
Boston, Mass.
phone: +1 978 314 6271
www.noteflight.com