No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
A Meta-Design Model for Creative Distributed Collaborative Design
Abstract
As collaboration in creating software systems becomes more complex and frequent among multidisciplinary teams, finding new strategies to support this collaboration becomes crucial. The challenge is to bridge the communication gaps among stakeholders with diverse cultural and professional backgrounds. Moreover, future uses and issues cannot be completely anticipated at design time, and it is necessary to develop open-ended software environments that can be evolved and tailored in opportunistic ways to tackle co-evolution of users and systems. A conceptual meta-design model, the Hive-Mind Space HMS model, has been proposed to support multidisciplinary design teams' collaboration and foster their situated innovation. The model provides localized habitable environments for diverse stakeholders and tools for them to tailor the system, allowing the co-evolution of systems and practices. The authors explore the possibility of utilizing boundary objects within the HMS model to facilitate the communication amongst stakeholders as well as their participation in the creative distributed design process. Two concrete case studies, a factory automation and the Valchiavenna Portal, demonstrate the implementation of the HMS model and provide a possible solution to overcome the complex, evolving and emerging nature of the collaborative design.
... SmartFit [6]- [8] has been designed and developed for allowing trainers to monitor a team of athletes by capturing, for each athlete, a set of measurements describing the athlete's behavior over a period, typically a number of days (D). Such measurements are recorded by physical sensors embedded in wearable devices (e.g. ...
... SmartFit [6]- [8] is a framework helping coaches and athletic trainers of non-professional sports teams to monitor and analyze data regarding the fitness and well-being of the athletes. ...
Our research work describes a team of human Digital Twins (DTs), each tracking fitness-related measurements describing an athlete’s behavior in consecutive days (e.g. food income, activity, sleep). After collecting enough measurements, the DT firstly predicts the physical twin performance during training and, in case of non-optimal result, it suggests modifications in the athlete’s behavior. The athlete’s team is integrated into SmartFit, a software framework for supporting trainers and coaches in monitoring and manage athletes’ fitness activity and results. Through IoT sensors embedded in wearable devices and applications for manual logging (e.g. mood, food income), SmartFit continuously captures measurements, initially treated as the dynamic data describing the current physical twins’ status. Dynamic data allows adapting each DT’s status and triggering the DT’s predictions and suggestions. The analyzed measurements are stored as the historical data, further processed by the DT to update (increase) its knowledge and ability to provide reliable predictions. Results show that, thanks to the team of DTs, SmartFit computes trustable predictions of the physical twins’ conditions and produces understandable suggestions which can be used by trainers to trigger optimization actions in the athletes’ behavior. Though applied in the sport context, SmartFit can be easily adapted to other monitoring tasks.
... Viewing software as a continuously evolving artifact considerably contributes to the progress of software development. The Hive-Mind Space (HMS) model [5] [6], a meta-design [7] conceptual model, has been proposed to tackle the fore mentioned issues and to support collaborative creativity among design teams. This paper describes the architecture and design principles of MikiWiki, a prototype of the HMS model that we built to evaluate the technical feasibility and the effectiveness of the model. ...
... The role of mediators is supported by the fact that boundary objects are localized differently in terms of users' role in the context, culture, expertise and background and device in use. The HMS model has been applied before to two different cases, mechanical engineering and collaborative knowledge management for tourism [5][6]. In these two applications, the environments were designed and implemented using a specific software framework, the BANCO framework [10][11]. ...
This paper presents MikiWiki, a meta-reflective wiki developed to prototype key aspects of the Hive-Mind Space model. MikiWiki is aimed at supporting End-User Development activities and exploring the opportunities to enable software tailoring at use time. Such an open-ended collaborative design process is realized by providing basic boundary object prototypes, allowing end users to remix, modify, and create their own boundary objects. Moreover, MikiWiki minimizes essential services at the server-side, while putting the main functionalities on the client-side, opening the whole system to its users for further tailoring. In addition to traditional wikis, MikiWiki allows different Communities of Practice to collaboratively design and to continuously evolve the whole system. This approach illustrates the meta-design concept, where some software collaboration between professional developers and end users is made possible through communication channels properly associated with the environment. As such, the MikiWiki environment is presented as a 'concept demonstrator' for meta-design and end-user tailoring.
... The use of digital twins in the healthcare industry is revolutionizing clinical processes and hospital management by enhancing medical care with digital tracking and advancing modelling of the human body [8]. ...
Digital twins' techs have come a long way. The term digital twin in the present context was originally used by John Vickers of NASA in 2002. But digging a bit deeper will show that the concept itself is much older. It was first applied in the 1970s during the Apollo XIII space program and NASA scientists needed to work with devices in outer space where it's almost impossible to be physically present and these virtual outcomes were extremely helpful.
... Collaborative creative design processes appeared due to the increasing complexity and growing number of design projects [71,72]. They support employees to work together more efficiently for a satisfactory result [12]. ...
... Model. The HMS model [Zhu, 2012;Zhu et al., 2011a;Zhu et al., 2010] is an evolution of the SSW methodology specifically oriented to support collaborative and creative design activities of multidisciplinary design teams. Hive Mind models in general focus on the collective intelligence (the hive mind) of people collaborating to pursue a common goal. ...
Our contribution will review, analyze, discuss, and synthesize the research work done over the last 10 years exploring meta-design as a major framework for end-user development (EUD). The overriding perspective of our approach is grounded in the basic assumptions that (1) designers can prompt and support change in a community of practice, but they cannot predetermine it and (2) design and use mutually shape one another in iterative, social processes. The chapter argues and provides evidence that EUD should not be restricted to create new technologies but its most important and far-reaching impact will be to transform cultures by empowering all people to become active contributors in personally meaningful activities. The individual sections discuss and describe our basic framework, EUD applications in different domains, new conceptual developments that broadened the concept of meta-design, the identification of design trade-offs and drawbacks, and design guidelines. All of these activities have contributed to revisiting and broadening the meta-design framework for end-user development.
... The challenge is to bridge the communication gaps among stakeholders with diverse cultural and professional backgrounds. It is necessary to develop open-ended software environments that can be evolved and tailored in opportunistic ways to tackle the co-evolution of users and systems [121]. Collaborative design involving end users has emerged as a response to the needs felt by various organizations of adapting software to specific environments and users. ...
When, in 1956, Artificial Intelligence (AI) was officially declared a research field, no one would have ever predicted the huge influence and impact its description, prediction, and prescription capabilities were going to have on our daily lives. In parallel to continuous advances in AI, the past decade has seen the spread of broadband and ubiquitous connectivity, (embedded) sensors collecting descriptive high dimensional data, and improvements in big data processing techniques and cloud computing. The joint usage of such technologies has led to the creation of digital twins, artificial intelligent virtual replicas of physical systems. Digital Twin (DT) technology is nowadays being developed and commercialized to optimize several manufacturing and aviation processes, while in the healthcare and medicine fields this technology is still at its early development stage. This paper presents the results of a study focused on the analysis of the state-of-the-art definitions of DT, the investigation of the main characteristics that a DT should possess, and the exploration of the domains in which DT applications are currently being developed. The design implications derived from the study are then presented: they focus on socio-technical design aspects and DT lifecycle. Open issues and challenges that require to be addressed in the future are finally discussed.
... Video games are peculiar and intrinsically multidisciplinary artifacts, requiring transversal expertise and characterized by an active involvement of their audience. In the development process, the collaboration among multidisciplinary teams is crucial, and it requires speci c solutions and approaches [1]. A critical stage is often the creation and denition of the story of the game. ...
The interactivity and the decision making processes typical of a video game have a strong infuence on how the story of the game should be told, but also on how the imaginary world of the game, where the story takes place, should be structured. As a consequence, there is a growing interest in the development of tools able to couple well with the increasing demanding peculiarities of "game writing" and "world building" activities, especially when game or level designers are called to do also the work of a writer. In this paper, we present A.T.L.A.S. (Automatic Terrain and Labels Assembling Software), a tool aimed at the automatic creation of complex imaginary worlds for video games, based on Procedural Content Generation techniques, but characterized also by a story-driven approach.
... On the basis of our research experience (Zhu et al. 2010;Ardito et al. 2011;Zhu, Barricelli, and Iacob 2011;Barricelli and Valtolina 2017), we believe an effective communication strategy might help all users in focusing on solving their problems rather than spending time in trying to understand complicated interfaces or interaction styles. In particular, for users who are not well-accustomed to technology use, but who need support for changing bad attitudes or behaviours (e.g. ...
This paper presents a study about communicability of conversational interfaces (namely chatbots) under a semiotic perspective. A chatbot is a software system that allows you to simulate real conversations between devices and users by means of a conversational interface (CI). After introducing the chatbot concept, focusing on its advantages and issues, we will present two domains of use in which chatbot interfaces can be effective: healthcare and smart home. For carrying out simple tasks such as finding information or triggering operations, users need an easy-to-use and to an easy-to-learn system to communicate with. To face this, conversational interfaces represent the latest trend in the field of digital design. For studying the communicability aspects of a CI, we carried out a user test to compare traditional and chatbot interfaces. This paper aims at evaluating the benefits at the communicability level of a chatbot in comparison to traditional GUI for incrementing the effectiveness and efficacy of communication between users and the system specifically for users with poor attitude in using technologies. In details, we evaluated the communicability of two prototypes that can be used to solve simple tasks in order to favour user inclusion, including everyone with very little exposure to technologies.
... Model. The HMS model [Zhu, 2012;Zhu et al., 2011a;Zhu et al., 2010] is an evolution of the SSW methodology specifically oriented to support collaborative and creative design activities of multidisciplinary design teams. Hive Mind models in general focus on the collective intelligence (the hive mind) of people collaborating to pursue a common goal. ...
Our contribution will review, analyze, discuss, and synthesize the research work done over the last 10 years exploring meta-design as a major framework for end-user development (EUD). The overriding perspective of our approach is grounded in the basic assumptions that (1) designers can prompt and support change in a community of practice, but they cannot predetermine it and (2) design and use mutually shape one another in iterative, social processes. The chapter argues and provides evidence that EUD should not be restricted to create new technologies but its most important and far-reaching impact will be to transform cultures by empowering all people to become active contributors in personally meaningful activities. The individual sections discuss and describe our basic framework, EUD applications in different domains, new conceptual developments that broadened the concept of meta-design, the identification of design trade-offs and drawbacks, and design guidelines. All of these activities have contributed to revisiting and broadening the meta-design framework for end-user development.
... Shared boundary objects is a visualisation strategy used to enable integration of knowledge across boundaries for multiple users. It can be used to support creativity in a distributed collaborative design process involving groups belonging to different Communities of Practices [65] and to achieve shared understanding through negotiation in heterogeneous problem solving [35]. Ref. [40] used theories of boundary objects to develop a framework in which visual representation mediated group work. ...
This paper reports a systematic review of shared visualisation based on fifteen papers from 2000 to 2013. The findings identified five shared visualisation strategies that represent the ways implemented to process data sharing and knowledge to arrive at the desired level of understanding. Four visualisation techniques were also identified to show how shared cognition is made possible in designing tools for mediating data or knowledge among the users involved. These findings provide research opportunities in integrating rich interactive data visualisation for mobile-based technologies as an effective mean in supporting collaborative work. Finally, social, task and cognitive elements which can be significantly supported by shared visualisation and a guideline for future researchers seeking to design shared visualisation-based systems are presented.
... This statement can be verified in many different application domains: for instance image editing with Photoshop and its plug-ins, Business Process Management (BPM) with solutions offering diverse connectors for service integration, computer games with World of Warcraft and the success of its add-ons which enable users to enhance their playing environment, and, of course, software development with the Eclipse ecosystem and its "everything is a plug-in" approach ( Gamma & Beck, 2004). Even if solutions exist and are used in everyday life, there are remaining issues, and a large part of the research work in end-user development tries to propose better tailorable systems ( Zhu et al., 2011). Not surprisingly, most of this research is directed towards new means for integration, since this way of tailoring has long been identified as offering a good equilibrium between the level of tailorability that can be achieved, and the level of expertise or effort that is required to achieve it (Mørch, 1997). ...
Society currently lives in a world of tailorable systems in which end-users are able to transform their working environment while achieving their tasks, day to day and over the time. Tailorability is most of the time achieved through dynamic component integration thanks to a huge number of components available over the Internet. In this context, the main problem for users is not anymore the integration of new components, but how to find the most interesting set of components that will fulfill their needs. Facing this issue, the authors’ assumption is that it would be helpful for users to take benefit of the experience of other users and our work aims at enhancing current software ecosystems to support this sharing of experience. The authors have applied this approach in the context of software development while considering Eclipse as one of the most advanced and used software ecosystem. The authors then offer ShareXP, an Eclipse feature that allows members of a group to share their expertise, this expertise being embodied in the “compositions” each of them has built.
ShareXP was already presented in "SHAREXP: AN ECLIPSE PLUG-IN FOR EXPERTISE SHARING AMONG DEVELOPERS" (IADIS CT 2012). The current paper is an extension where the authors deeper show that ShareXP is only a first step in their global approach trying to enhance not only the Eclipse ecosystem, but software ecosystems in general.
Automation in computing systems has always been considered a valuable solution to unburden the user. Internet of Things (IoT) technology best suits automation in different domains, such as home automation, retail, industry, and transportation, to name but a few. While these domains are strongly characterized by implicit user interaction, more recently, automation has been adopted also for the provision of interactive and immersive experiences that actively involve the users. IoT technology thus becomes the key for Smart Interactive Experiences (SIEs), i.e., immersive automated experiences created by orchestrating different devices to enable smart environments to fluidly react to the final users’ behavior. There are domains, e.g., cultural heritage, where these systems and the SIEs can support and provide several benefits. However, experts of such domains, while intrigued by the opportunity to induce SIEs, are facing tough challenges in their everyday work activities when they are required to automate and orchestrate IoT devices without the necessary coding skills. This paper presents a design approach that tries to overcome these difficulties thanks to the adoption of ontologies for defining Event-Condition-Action rules. More specifically, the approach enables domain experts to identify and specify properties of IoT devices through a user-defined semantics that, being closer to the domain experts’ background, facilitates them in automating the IoT devices behavior. We also present a study comparing three different interaction paradigms conceived to support the specification of user-defined semantics through a “transparent” use of ontologies. Based on the results of this study, we work out some lessons learned on how the proposed paradigms help domain experts express their semantics, which in turn facilitates the creation of interactive applications enabling SIEs.
The traditional, in-house software development process is progressively losing its appeal in favor of distributed, multi-site development: this is mainly due to the well-known advantages of the latter, such as higher productivity and lower costs. However, this practice has also some documented disadvantages that are inherent to distance: geographical, temporal and socio-cultural distances between stakeholders can affect communication, coordination and control activities, thus making collaboration very difficult. This would not immediately look as the ideal scenario for applying Agile methodologies, which definitely rely on continuous collaboration between all stakeholders, including (with a very important role) the customers. This paper analyzes issues related to collaboration between customers and developers in a distributed, Agile setting and proposes a framework that defines practices and tools for handling project information and communication activities.
Society currently lives in a world of tailorable systems in which end-users are able to transform their working environment while achieving their tasks, day to day and over the time. Tailorability is most of the time achieved through dynamic component integration thanks to a huge number of components available over the Internet. In this context, the main problem for users is not anymore the integration of new components, but how to find the most interesting set of components that will fulfll their needs. Facing this issue, the authors' assumption is that it would be helpful for users to take beneft of the experience of other users and our work aims at enhancing current software ecosystems to support this sharing of experience. The authors have applied this approach in the context of software development while considering Eclipse as one of the most advanced and used software ecosystem. The authors then offer ShareXP, an Eclipse feature that allows members of a group to share their expertise, this expertise being embodied in the "compositions" each of them has built. ShareXP was already presented in (Bourguin et al., 2012). The current paper is an extension where the authors deeper show that ShareXP is only a first step in their global approach trying to enhance not only the Eclipse ecosystem, but software ecosystems in general.
The Environmental Noise Directive (Directive 2002/49/EC) obliged competent authorities to prepare strategic noise maps (SNM) and actions plans (AP) for the major roads, railways, airports and agglomerations with more than 100 000 inhabitants. Both SNM and AP have to be updated every five years, that is why procedures of creating, using and administrating of SNM and AP can be considered as constant processes. These processes are very complex and require specialized knowledge and practical skills within noise mapping area and connected with them proper experience of SNM usage and AP enforcement. Unfortunately as experience shows, Polish administrators of SNM are not competent enough to meet these requirements. The problem outlined above has become the basis to develop web-based system for knowledge transfer to SNM administrators, covering such key issues as: the preparation of guidelines for SAM, gathering the appropriate input data for acoustic model and the subsequent verification of developed SAM.
This paper presents MikiWiki, a meta-wiki developed to prototype key aspects of the Hive-Mind Space (HMS) model. The HMS model
has been proposed to share the visions of End-User Development and meta-design in collaborative online environment development.
It aims to support cultures of participation and to tackle the co-evolution of users and systems. The model provides localized
habitable environments for diverse stakeholders and tools for them to tailor the system under design, allowing the co-evolution
of systems and practices. MikiWiki is aimed at supporting the exploration of opportunities to enable software tailoring at
use time. Such an open-ended collaborative design process is realized by providing basic building blocks as boundary object
prototypes, allowing end users to remix, modify, and create their own boundary objects. Moreover, MikiWiki minimizes essential
services at the server-side, while putting the main functionalities on the client-side, opening the whole system to its users
for further tailoring.
In a collaborative task, group dynamics have been shown to affect students' grades, motivation to pursue a topic or subject, documentation of the experience, learning, enjoyment of a project, and relationships with their classmates. The results presented in this paper illustrate the effect team dynamics also have upon technology appropriation, by combining proven data-collection strategies and the use of a system that augments paper sketchbooks with multimedia capture and sharing capabilities. We analyze the relationships between students' design notebooks, questionnaires, and interview responses, class observations, and course performance. Our study found that students' use of collaborative tools increases when they believe their teammates to be equally engaged and involved in the project. Moreover, students engaged in successful collaborations are likely to take fewer notes than those involved in conflict-filled collaborations, and students with considerable experience working in groups may bypass critical steps in creating joint problem-solving spaces with each new group.
Task oriented and object oriented traditional interactive system design methods show more and more shortcomings in the light of recent evolutions. These evolutions are both external (organisational) and internal (technological) to the developed systems. The two main problems of traditional methods are their linearity and rigidity. Once a system has been introduced, it can only evolve through maintenance. These methods follow several steps segmenting time, actors, and work to be realised. Taking results from the human sciences, and particularly from Activity Theory, we show how we have defined the co-evolution concept as a solution for the above-mentioned problems. We also present the DARE system that we have developed for supporting this concept.
Historically, participatory design (PD) has focused on system development at design time by bringing developers and users together to envision contexts of use. But despite the best efforts at design time, systems need to evolve at use time to fit new needs, account for changing tasks, and incorporate new technologies. In this paper, we argue that systems should be designed as seeds that are able to evolve. The evolutionary growth of the seed is driven by informed participation, in which active users explore complex design problems and, in the process, create new information. When evolutionary growth can no longer proceed efficiently, a reseeding phase is required to organize, formalize, and generalize information so that it may support a new period of evolutionary growth. Informed participation requires social changes as well as new interactive systems that provide the opportunity and resources for social debate and discussion rather than merely delivering predigested information to users. This paper presents key issues for designing new media in support of informed participation. These issues have been explored through several applications of the DynaSites system in contexts including collaborative design and courses-as-seeds.
Designing software involves good perception, good reasoning, and a talent to express oneself effectively through programming and interactive languages. Semiotic theories can help HCI designers increase their power to perceive, reason and communicate. In this paper we present the semiotic engineering approach to HCI and some of the results that have been reached at the Semiotic Engineering Research Group (SERG) at the Informatics Department at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio).
In the Information Society, end-users keep increasing very fast in number, as well as in their demand with respect to the
activities they would like to perform with computer environments, without being obliged to become computer specialists. There
is a great request to provide end-users with powerful and flexible environments, tailorable to the culture, skills, and needs
of a very diverse end-user population. In this chapter, we discuss a framework for End-User Development and present our methodology
for designing software environments that support the activities of a particular class of end-users, called domain-expert users,
with the objective of making their work with the computer easier. Such environments are called Software Shaping Workshops,
in analogy to artisan workshops: they provide users only with the necessary tools that allow them to accomplish their specific
activities by properly shaping software artifacts without being lost in virtual space.
Key words. end-user development, domain expert, user diversity, gain, co-evolution, implicit information, tacit knowledge,
user notation, HCI model.
We think that over the next few years, the goal of interactive systems and services will evolve from just making systems easy to use (even though that goal has not yet been completely achieved) to making systems that are easy to develop by end users. By now, most people have become familiar with the basic functionality and interfaces of computers, but they are not able to manage any programming language. Therefore, they cannot develop new applications or modify current ones according to their needs.
In order to address such challenges it is necessary a new paradigm, based on a multidisciplinary approach involving several types of expertise, such as software engineering, human-computer interaction, CSCW, which are now rather fragmented and with little interaction. The resulting methods and tools can provide results useful across many application domains, such as ERP, multi-device services (accessible through both mobile and stationary devices), and professional applications.
Key words. tailorability, end user programming, flexibility, usability
The paper is a case study of customer-initiated software product development. We have observed and participated in system
development activities in a commercial software house (company) over a period of two years. The company produces project-planning
tools for the oil and gas industry, and relies on interaction with customers for further development of its products. Our
main research question is how customers and professional developers engage in mutual development mediated by shared software
tools (products and support systems). We have used interviews with developers and customers as our main source of data, and
identified the activities (from use to development) where customers have contributed to development. We analyze our findings
in terms of co-configuration, meta-design and modding in order to name and compare the various stages of development (adaptation,
generalization, improvement request, specialization, and tailoring).
The objective of this essay is to provide the beginning of a principled classification of some of the ways space is intelligently used. Studies of planning have typically focused on the temporal ordering of action, leaving as unaddressed, questions of where to lay down instruments, ingredients, work-in-progress, and the like. But, in having a body, we are spatially located creatures: we must always be facing some direction, have only certain objects in view, be within reach of certain others. How we manage the spatial arrangement of items around us, is not an afterthought; it is an integral part of the way we think, plan and behave. The proposed classification has three main categories: spatial arrangements that simplify choice; spatial arrangements that simplify perception; and spatial dynamics that simplify internal computation. The data for such a classification is drawn from videos of cooking, assembly and packing, everyday observations in supermarkets, workshops and playrooms, and experimental studies of subjects playing Tetris, the computer game. This study, therefore, focusses on interactive processes in the medium and short term: on how agents set up their workplace for particular tasks, and how they continuously manage that workplace.
Adding usability improving solutions during late stage development is to some extent restricted by the software architecture. However, few software engineers and human–computer interaction engineers are aware of this important constraint and as a result avoidable rework is frequently necessary. In this paper we present a new type of pattern called a bridging pattern. Bridging patterns extend interaction design patterns by adding information on how to generally implement this pattern. Bridging patterns can be used for architectural analysis: when the generic implementation is known, software architects can assess what it means in their context and can decide whether they need to modify the software architecture to support these patterns. This may prevent part of the high costs incurred by adaptive maintenance activities once the system has been implemented and leads to architectures with better support for usability.
We describe an approach to acquiring information during the creation and use of domain-oriented design environ- ments. Our model consists of three phases: seeding, evolu- tionary growth, and reseeding. A seed for a domain- oriented design environment is created through a par- ticipatory design process between environment developers and domain designers by incorporating domain-specific knowledge into a domain-independent architecture for design environments. Evolutionary growth takes place as domain designers use the seeded environment to undertake specific projects. Reseeding is a process that reinvolves the environment developers to help domain designers better or- ganize, formalize, and generalize knowledge added during the use phases,
In a collaborative task, group dynamics have been shown to affect students' grades, motivation to pursue a topic or subject, documentation of the experience, learning, enjoyment of a project, and relationships with their classmates. The results presented in this paper illustrate the effect team dynamics also have upon technology appropriation, by combining proven data-collection strategies and the use of a system that augments paper sketchbooks with multimedia capture and sharing capabilities. We analyze the relationships between students' design notebooks, questionnaires, and interview responses, class observations, and course performance. Our study found that students' use of collaborative tools increases when they believe their teammates to be equally engaged and involved in the project. Moreover, students engaged in successful collaborations are likely to take fewer notes than those involved in conflict-filled collaborations, and students with considerable experience working in groups may bypass critical steps in creating joint problem-solving spaces with each new group.
The ever increasing use of interactive software systems and the evolution of the World Wide Web into the so-called Web 2.0 determines the rise of new roles for users, who evolve from information consumers to information producers. The distinction between users and designers becomes fuzzy. Users are increasingly involved in the design and development of the tools they use, thus users and developers are not anymore two mutually exclusive groups of people. In this paper types of users that are between pure end users and software developers are analyzed. Some users take a very active role in shaping software tools to their needs, but they do it without being aware of programming, they are unwitting programmers who need appropriate development techniques and environments. A meta-design participatory approach for supporting unwitting end-user development through advanced visual systems is briefly discussed.
End-user development (EUD) activities range from customization to component configuration and programming. Office software, such as the ubiquitous spreadsheet, provides customization facilities, while the growth of the Web has added impetus to end-user scripting for interactive functions in Web sites. In scientific and engineering domains, end users frequently develop complex systems with standard programming languages such as C++ and Java. However, only a minority of users adapt commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software products. Indeed, composing systems from reusable components, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, defeats most end users who resort to expensive and scarce expert developers for implementation.
When terminology gets people riled up, you know that something lurks beneath the surface. In this Whiteboard, Gerard Torenvliet describes and decries the loss of meaning that the term affordance has suffered over the years, as widely read authors have redefined it and as readers and users have muddied it. Gerard argues that clarity in usability work---and the ability to participate in requirements definition---depend on our using the term's original meaning, and he urges us to reclaim it.
How Designers Think is based on Bryan Lawson's many observations of designers at work, interviews with designers and their clients and collaborators. This extended work is the culmination of twenty-five years' research and shows the author's belief that we all can learn to design better. The creative mind continues to have power to surprise and this book aims to nurture and extend this creativity. This book is not intended as an authoritative description of how designers should think but to provide helpful advice on how to develop an understanding of design. 'How Designers Think' will be of great interest, not only to designers seeking a greater insight into their own thought processes, but also to students of design in general from undergraduate level upward.
For most medical informatics software products, insufficient effort is spent on the design phase of production. However, poor design often leads to systems that are either not well accepted, or far less effective than they could be. In this paper, we describe the ideas of participatory design and discuss why these ideas are especially applicable to medical informatics systems. In particular, we present a case study in the area of clinical trial protocol management. We designed and developed a tool aimed at increasing accrual to clinical trial protocols at an oncology center. However, the design evolved over time, and features of this design were only discovered through iterative development and interaction with the users within the context of the workplace.
This paper is about the development of systems whose end users are professional people working in a specific domain (e.g., medicine, geology, mechanical engineering); they are expert in that domain, but not necessarily expert in nor even conversant with computer science. In several work organizations, end users need to tailor their software systems to better adapt them to their requirements and even to create or modify software artifacts. These are end-user development activities and are the focus of this paper. A model of the interaction between users and systems, which also takes into account their reciprocal coevolution during system usage, is discussed. This model is used to define a methodology aimed at designing software environments that allow end users to become designers of their own tools. The methodology is illustrated by discussing two experimental cases.
Complex design problems often cannot be solved by individuals or by homogenous groups. Communities of interest (CoIs) (defined by their collective concern with the resolution of a problem) bring together stakeholders from different communities of practice (CoP). Reaching a common understanding between these stakeholders is a major challenge due to the "symmetry of ignorance" caused by their respective cultures and their use of different knowledge systems. Our research has focused on the development of conceptual frameworks and innovative socio-technical environments to exploit the "symmetry of ignorance" as a source for social creativity among CoIs. Gerhard Fischer 2 IRIS'24, Norway 1
Web systems provide solutions for real world problems from various domains. Defining a problem space and materializing its solution within a web space brings a set of challenges that come from both the diversity of end users facing the problem and the diversity of technologies available today. This paper addresses the design of Web systems seen as web spaces which provide their end users with tools tailored to their domain, their role in the domain, their culture and the platform they are using. These tools help end users develop their exploration of the problem at hand without being lost in the space. We propose an abstraction model able to support the design of localized web systems and which preserves software quality measures like maintainability, reuse and consistency. The method for applying this model together with a concrete example of its application is presented.
When terminology gets people riled up, you know that something lurks beneath the surface. In this Whiteboard , Gerard Torenvliet describes and decries the loss of meaning that the term affordance has suffered over the years, as widely read authors have redefined it and as readers and users have muddied it. Gerard argues that clarity in usability work---and the ability to participate in requirements definition---depend on our using the term's original meaning, and he urges us to reclaim it.
This dissertation addresses the question of how to use software components to build tailorable software systems. Tailorable software systems can be adapted to changing or diversified requirements after initial development and deployment. Traditionally, software components are used in the development phase of a software system in order to reduce costs and increase quality. Here, novel principles and methods are developed and evaluated that permit the maintenance and manipulation of a system’s compositional structure during its use. A first exploratory experiment using existing component technologies shows that the approach of component-based tailorability raises two main technical problems. First, one has to design an appropriate component model that permits the decomposition of a software system according to its expected evolution. The experiment shows that the appropriateness of a component model is primarily determined by the forms of component interaction it supports. If the interactions required by a given decomposition cannot be implemented, the approach fails to provide the necessary range of tailorability. Second, one needs a runtime and tailoring environment that manages the system’s component structures. The environment should distinguish between a component plan and its instances, thus permitting the sharing of plans and their subsequent changes. Furthermore, in the case of shared component plans, a method is needed for restricting the effect of a change to subset of instances. Both problems are first addressed on a formal level. Within the framework of data space theory, a mathematical model of component interaction is developed. Based on this model, a theorem shows that the combination of two forms of basic interaction (events and shared variables) permits the high-quality implementation of interactions resulting from arbitrary system decompositions. The second problem is addressed by a formal model of a runtime and tailoring environment, defining its central elements and methods, in particular the runtime tailoring operations. As proof-of-concept, both solutions are implemented in the JAVA programming language. The FLEXIBEANS component model extends the existing JAVABEANS model with the shared variable interaction style demanded by the theoretical results. The EVOLVE platform is a runtime and tailoring environment for component-based multi-user systems that are distributed over the Internet. In combination, FLEXIBEANS and EVOLVE are employed to provide a number of example systems with the property of tailorability. This shows the applicability of the component-based tailorability approach. The final discussion points to directions of future research.
Scientific work is heterogeneous, requiring many different actors and viewpoints. It also requires cooperation. The two create tension between divergent viewpoints and the need for generalizable findings. We present a model of how one group of actors managed this tension. It draws on the work of amateurs, professionals, administrators and others connected to the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley, during its early years. Extending the Latour-Callon model of interessement, two major activities are central for translating between viewpoints: standardization of methods, and the development of `boundary objects'. Boundary objects are both adaptable to different viewpoints and robust enough to maintain identity across them. We distinguish four types of boundary objects: repositories, ideal types, coincident boundaries and standardized forms.
This paper suggests that experience influences what 'readers' of graphical representations look at and hence what they see, so that readership skills—both perceptual and interpretive—for graphical notations must be learned. It draws on results from two sets of empirical studies: observational studies of expert hardware designers using electronics schematics, and experiments comparing readability of textual and graphical programming notations. Less experienced users appear unable to exploit (or even notice) the graphical cues that might help them. The paper discusses 'secondary notion', 'the match-mismatch hypothesis' and a model of the programmer as an 'active reader', in order to shed some light on what distinguishes expert from novice behaviour. It observes that clarity in a representation may well rely on good use of features that are not formally part of the notation, and it concludes that the importance of training and experience with respect to the use of graphical notations has been underestimated.
Design is a process that is tightly coupled to use and that continues during the use of a system. This chapter discusses what may be involved in continuing design in use, and how one, in the initial design process, may create systems that are tailorable. Ideal tailorable systems are those in which there are means for the users, or supporters near the users, to make them fit different work situations. Tailoring a system, continuing designing in use, is an activity different from initial design. The activity is related to specific use situations and the result is not a new system, but a modified system, that is, a system with a history that relates it to the earlier version and problems with its use. The chapter also discusses various activities involved in modifying computer systems.
Today end users are no longer mere consumers of computer tools but increasingly need to be more active producers of information and software artifacts. New techniques for engineering software are needed to support end users in this new role. This paper introduces one of these techniques, namely unwitting end-user development, and explains the BANCO architecture, which has been designed to support unwitting end-user development allowing the creation of systems customized to end-user culture, end-user role, and platform in use, as well as system re-use and evolution. It also supports consistency in interaction styles, particularly in web applications. This reasoning is made concrete through an example that presents a factory-automation prototype built using the BANCO architecture.
In this paper, we introduce map-based wikis describing the contextual and cultural mediation performed by them. Such virtual interactive systems allow users, having different cultural backgrounds, different expertise and roles, and using different devices, to create and manage a shared knowledge base. The mediation activity made by map-based wikis is cultural in that users that belong to different cultures and speaking different languages can access the same knowledge base and share their knowledge with the others, and contextual because of the ability of the system to mediate between users acting different roles and between users that access the system with different devices, mobile and desktop. The discussion is made concrete by the example of Valchiavenna BANCO Prototype.
As collaboration in creating information systems becomes more frequent and more complex among multidisciplinary teams, finding new models for supporting this collaboration becomes valuable. However, the challenge for the collaboration is how to bridge the communication gaps among stakeholders with different cultural backgrounds utilizing different systems of signs, languages and representations [1] and possibly having different perceptions as well as interpretations. Communication is therefore needed to reach a common meaning about the messages they exchange. Another big challenge in collaboration is to provide the right tools or platform, which with new affordances [3] support stakeholders' creative collaboration. The aim of this research is to investigate End-User Development and meta-design approaches for supporting creative collaborative design and to design a space to facilitate diverse stakeholders effectively communicate with each other as well as actively participate in the iterative design process.
The Constructed Narratives project has been designed for use in public spaces where there is the opportunity for individuals and groups of people, who are not acquainted with each other, to encounter the game and subsequently each other. The goal is to provide a platform that supports discourse in environments where "keeping comfortable distance" between oneself and others is the norm. The system framework developed for this project can be applied for use in computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL), and collaborative design activities in the tradition of computer supported collaborative work (CSCW). The current domain explored in the Constructed Narratives project is computer systems designed to enable shared experience through play, or computer supported collaborative play (CSCP). This paper examines the theories that influenced and design methodologies used by an interdisciplinary team of artists, designers and technologists used to develop solutions for multiple wicked design problems that can arise during the development of the system architecture for a tangible social interface.
The use of whiteboards is pervasive across a wide range of work domains. But some of the qualities that make them successful—an intuitive interface, physical working space, and easy erasure—inherently make them poor tools for archival and reuse. If whiteboard content could be made available in times and spaces beyond those supported by the whiteboard alone, how might it be appropriated? We explore this question via ReBoard, a system that automatically captures whiteboard images and makes them accessible through a novel set of user-centered access tools. Through the lens of a seven week workplace field study, we found that by enabling new workflows, ReBoard increased the value of whiteboard content for collaboration.
For years pundits have predicted that information technology will obliterate the need for everything from travel to supermarkets to business organizations to social life itself. They have heralded the coming of the virtual office, digital butlers, electronic libraries, and virtual universities. Beaten down by info-glut and exasperated by computer systems with software crashes, viruses, and unintelligible error messages, individual users tend to wax less enthusiastic about technological predictions. Amid the hype and the never-narrowing gap between promise and performance, they find it hard to get a vision of the true potential of the digital revolution. John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid in their book The Social Life of Information (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2000) help us see through frenetic visions of the future to the real forces for change in society. Arguing elegantly for the important role that human sociability plays in the world of bits, this book, and the chapters published here in First Monday, gives us an optimistic look beyond the simplicities of information and individuals. The authors show how a better understanding of the contribution that communities, organizations, and institutions make to learning, knowledge, and judgement can lead to the richest possible use of technology in our work and everyday lives.
We - the users turned creators and distributors of content - are TIME's Person of the Year 2006, and AdAge's Advertising Agency of the Year 2007. We form a new Generation C. We have MySpace, YouTube, and OurMedia; we run social software, and drive the development of Web 2.0. But beyond the hype, what's really going on?
In this groundbreaking exploration of our developing participatory online culture, Axel Bruns establishes the core principles which drive the rise of collaborative content creation in environments, from open source through blogs and Wikipedia to Second Life. This book shows that what's emerging here is no longer just a new form of content production, but a new process for the continuous creation and extension of knowledge and art by collaborative communities: produsage. The implications of the gradual shift from production to produsage are profound, and will affect the very core of our culture, economy, society, and democracy.
To create successful interactive systems, user interface designers need to cooperate with developers and application domain experts in an interdisciplinary team. These groups, however, usually miss a common terminology to exchange ideas, opinions, and values. This paper presents an approach that uses pattern languages to capture this knowledge in software development, HCI, and the application domain. A formal, domain-independent definition of design patterns allows for computer support without sacrificing readability, and pattern use is integrated into the usability engineering lifecycle. As an example, experience from building an award-winning interactive music exhibit was turned into a pattern language, which was then used to inform follow-up projects and support HCI education.