Abstract The creation of a shared understanding of the project vision of all relevant stakeholders is vital to the requirements engineering process. One way to create such a shared understanding is through the use of vision videos that visualize the project vision at an early project stage. However, not all functional aspects can be presented. For example, the fact that an access code is valid for only a single use can be hard to visualize. One low-effort solution could be the insertion of short texts or short audio clips. In this work, our question is twofold: What effects do short pieces of additional information have in vision videos? What are suitable ways to add this information to vision videos? To answer these research questions, we investigated three different methods of inserting additional information to vision videos in an eye tracking study. We inserted short texts either below the scene or as overlays and also investigated the addition of short audio clips. These methods were evaluated in terms of participants’ video comprehension, visual effort, cognitive load and subjective preference. The results of our study show that the pieces of additional information improve vision comprehension, thereby supporting the creation of a shared understanding. All investigated methods lead to only marginal increases of the viewers’ cognitive load. Based on our results, we derive recommendations on how to insert additional information in vision videos.

One main goal of requirements engineering is ensuring that all stakeholders share the same vision of the future system. Vision Videos can be used for this purpose. They visualize the product vision at an early stage of the project. However, some functional aspects, such as an access code being valid only once, are difficult to visualize. Short texts could be a low-effort solution to complement videos with additional information. Thus, represented visions and requirements could be taken to the next level of clarification. Our question is two-fold: What effects do texts have in vision videos? What are suitable ways to add textual information to vision videos? We conducted an eye tracking study to investigate the effects of adding short texts to vision videos, either below the scene or as text overlays. We evaluated these two methods regarding video comprehension, reading time, cognitive load and subjective preference. Our study shows that texts in vision videos improve vision comprehension and thus support the achievement of one requirements engineering goal. Both methods increase the cognitive load of viewers only by a reasonable margin. No clear-cut preference for a single variant was found. We derive recommendations on how to add texts to vision videos.