Contextual Inquiry into Business Requirements Elicitation of Indigenous Enterprise: A Case of the Malaysian Batik Microenterprise

Batik is a traditional art form whose charm lies in its power of storytelling. Batik making is practiced by various indigenous communities in Asia and Africa and has evolved into a socio-economic uplift existing as cottage industry. The Malaysian batik industry was revived by the government intervention to emphasize batik as a cultural identity and also to improve the livelihood of batik producers where the majority operates as indigenous microenterprises. However, the batik making tasks and the management of batik microenterprises are currently not supported by the use of ICT. To facilitate batik microenterprises ICT adoption we proposed the development of ICT-based work systems that emphasize the cultural context of batik production. We argued that a technology conception needs to consider the ecological aspect of batik production that comprises of resources, technology and geography to understand barriers and opportunities of technology. To support our argument, we conducted a batik microenterprise business requirements elicitation to formulate the technology conception for an ICT-based work system. We adopted the framework that considers a cultural diversified practice and focus on the cultural context as a business requirement for ICT adoption. We conducted a contextual inquiry using multi-activity inquiry that include site visits, face-to-face and focus group interviews with an informal community of practice of batik making. Our participants are representatives of batik advocators, entrepreneurs, practitioners and apprentices. We strategize the focus group inquiry in a workshop setting using verbal and visual cues to navigate the chaotic and fragmented storytelling of group members. From the contextual analysis conducted, we discovered that the technological conception for batik microenterprise is incomplete. The fear of batik cultural erosion is overlook as batik makers are more concern with it. Our work will contribute to the systems engineering of ICT-based work systems for indigenous or cultural influenced business