REConnect: Participatory RE that Matters

Abstract: Software increasingly shapes the infrastructures of daily life, making requirements engineering (RE) central to ensuring that systems align with human values and lived experiences. Yet, current popular practices such as CrowdRE and AI-assisted elicitation strategies risk detaching requirements work from the cultural, social, and political contexts that shape lived experiences, human values, and real user needs. In this paper, we introduce REConnect that re-centers RE on the human connection as central to the understanding of lived experiences where impact is sought. REConnect advocates for a human-centered participatory approach "that matters" to the communities and beneficiaries involved, ensuring alignment with their values and aspirations. Drawing on three case studies of societal impact: BloodSync in rural Nepal, Herluma supporting women at risk of homelessness in Canada, and BridgingRoots to revitalize Indigenous languages in the Canadian Arctic. REConnect argues that three key principles and enablers: building trusting relationships, co-designing with and alongside stakeholders, and empowering users as agents of change, can yield requirements that are culturally grounded, socially legitimate, and sustainable beyond system delivery. REConnect also proposes a set of actionable practices (REActions) that embed relationality and ongoing stakeholder engagement throughout requirements elicitation, analysis, and validation of solution development. Finally, we situate REConnect in the era of Generative AI. While AI can accelerate and scale certain RE tasks, its integration must be guided by participatory practices that not only preserve human agency but also empower humans' roles to become guardians of values and ethics, inclusion amplifiers, curators of AI outputs, and co-reflectors in iterative review cycles.