End-User Development (EUD) studies how to empower end users (among which, e.g., professionals and organizational workers) to modify, adapt and extend the software systems they daily use, thus coping with the evolving needs of their work organizations and the shop-floor environment. This research area is becoming increasingly important also for the cross fertilization of ideas and approaches that come from the fields of Information Systems and Human-Computer Interaction. However, if one considers the variety of research proposals stemming from this common ground, there is the risk of losing denotational precision of the key terms adopted in the common vocabulary of EUD. To counteract this natural semantic drift, the objective of this paper is to distinguish within three EUD complementary important notions, namely activities, roles, and artifacts, in order to help researchers deepen important phenomena regarding the “meta-design” of systems built to support EUD practices.

This paper analyzes how User-Centred Design (UCD) has been carried out in the creation of a web-based system, whose aim is monitoring air quality for sustainable industrial development. This distributed multimedia system has been commissioned by the Puglia region and it is used primarily by industries and regional government experts. Several lessons are learned from this analysis and hints about the effective application of UCD and the fruitful involvement of users for creating usable systems are derived.

This paper aims at analyzing the category of multi-tiered proxy design problems, where end-user developers do not necessarily coincide with the actual end users of the system, but can be considered as end users’ proxies. This situation can be found in a variety of application domains, from home automation, where electricians defining home automation systems for energy saving are different from house occupants, to e-government, where administrative employees creating e-government services are different from citizens using those services. The analysis leads to the definition of a new interaction and co-evolution model, called ICE2, which, on the basis of the model discussed in a previous work, considers not only the case of end users that directly make their system evolve by means of end-user development activities, but also the case where a proxy figure is present, namely an expert in the application domain that creates and modifies software artifacts for others (the actual end users). Finally, a design approach is proposed, which aims at generalizing the solutions suggested in different application domains, and at sustaining the interaction and co-evolution processes that involve end users, end-user developers, and systems.

Cultures of participation are oriented towards providing end users with the means to actively participate in problems that are personally meaningfully to them. An overall aim of cultures of participation is to apply collective knowledge to address major problems that our societies are facing today. The CoPDA Workshop is in its second edition, after the first one that was held in 2013 during the International Symposium on End-User Development in Copenhagen (Denmark) [4]. In the 2014's edition the focus is on social computing and its contributions to learning, working and living.

In the design of computer systems, human diversity and their specific needs have been neglected in the past, possibly because engineers were developing products for end users who were very much like themselves. The large impact that computer systems have nowadays on the increasing number of different users brings to consider traditional Human-Computer Interaction topics, such as usercentered design, usability engineering, accessibility, information visualization, very important also for Information Systems, since they influence technology usage in business, managerial, organizational and cultural contexts. People would like computer systems that can be tailored to their individual needs and working practices. To this aim, systems must be developed whose user interfaces is flexible and personalizable, i.e., it permits end users to modify or add new functionalities, still being simple and easy to use, not requiring any programming knowledge. In this paper, we discuss an approach that gives end users the possibility to tailor presentation as well as functionalities of the system they use, thus supporting users to participate in the design of their tools.

End-user development techniques are recently becoming a fundamental added value of information systems, since they allow system adaptation to the evolving needs of a company’s users. To adequately manage the life cycle and code quality of software created through end-user development activities, end-user software engineering literature proposes a variety of methods. However, the underlying assumption is that end users carry out end-user development activities to adapt or develop software artifacts for their personal use. For this reason, the usability of the software artifacts resulting from the end user’s work becomes a secondary issue. But, this is not true for multi-tiered proxy design problems, where the usability of software artifacts created by domain experts for other people is instead a fundamental issue. In this paper, we analyze the approaches presented in literature that address this kind of problem, and propose a preliminary solution based on meta-design and meta-modeling.

End-user development techniques are recently becoming a fundamental added value of information systems, since they allow system adaptation to the evolving needs of a company’s users. To adequately manage the life cycle and code quality of software created through end-user development activities, end-user software engineering literature proposes a variety of methods. However, the underlying assumption is that end users carry out end-user development activities to adapt or develop software artifacts for their personal use. For this reason, the usability of the software artifacts resulting from the end user’s work becomes a secondary issue. But, this is not true for multi-tiered proxy design problems, where the usability of software artifacts created by domain experts for other people is instead a fundamental issue. In this paper, we analyze the approaches presented in literature that address this kind of problem, and propose a preliminary solution based on meta-design and meta-modeling.

In this paper we propose a novel conceptual framework for the design and continuous evolution of ambient intelligence environments. This framework is structured along three layers - physical, inference and user layer - sharing an information space of events, conditions and actions. In particular, an end-user development approach is advocated for the user layer to support rule design and development. At this stage of the research agenda, we are investigating which could be the most suitable interaction style for rule design: indeed, it should be compatible with the underlying distributed inference layer and easy to use by a community of end users (e.g. a family). To this aim, this paper presents a user study that explores end-user development tasks for a smart home and compares two well-known systems in supporting end users in these activities. The results of the study have provided some indications for the further implementation of our framework.

User diversity and co-evolution of users and systems are two important phenomena usually observed in the design and use of IT artifacts. In recent years, End-User Development (EUD) has been proposed to take into account these phenomena, by providing mechanisms that support people, who are not software professionals, to modify, adapt, and even create IT artifacts according to their specific evolving needs. This is particularly true in the case of sentient multimedia systems, in which the system is called on to interact with multiple sensors and multiple human actors. However, to motivate and sustain these people, a culture of participation is necessary, as well as proper metadesign activities that may promote and maintain it. To this aim, this article first proposes a model for describing interaction and co-evolution in sentient multimedia systems enhanced by EUD features. Then it presents four main roles involved in interaction and co-evolution, including that of maieuta designer, as the “social counterpart” of the metadesigner. Finally, it describes how the maieuta designer is in charge of carrying out all those activities that are necessary to cultivate a culture of participation, by means of proper ways that are briefly introduced in the article.

In recent years, end users are increasingly requiring to adapt and shape the software artifacts they use, thus becoming developers of their tools without being or willing to become computer experts. Capitalizing on the experience gained in the collaboration with an Italian research and certification institution, this paper proposes a Task Management System based on a Web service architecture, aimed at supporting the activities of workflow designers of this institution. The objective is to create a system that assists such domain experts in designing workflows through semantic orchestration of existing Web services, permitting them to use the knowledge and expertise they possess.

In recent years, end users are increasingly requiring to adapt and shape the software artifacts they use, thus becoming developers of their tools without being or willing to become computer experts. Capitalizing on the experience gained in the collaboration with an Italian research and certification institution, this paper proposes a Task Management System based on a Web service architecture, aimed at supporting the activities of workflow designers of this institution. The objective is to create a system that assists such domain experts in designing workflows through semantic orchestration of existing Web services, permitting them to use the knowledge and expertise they possess.

Web services are more and more used on the web, but presenting them adequately in user interfaces is often difficult. In this paper, a new specification language is presented, based on the Web Service Description Language, called GWSDL (Graphic Web Service Description Language), which tries to overcome this limitation. In the proposed language, based on XML, tags to identify user interface elements are introduced; thanks to such tags, a web service presentation can be specified, also permitting its visualization on different devices and according to different users’ characteristics and preferences.

Web services are more and more used on the web, but presenting them adequately in user interfaces is often difficult. In this paper, a new specification language is presented, based on the Web Service Description Language, called GWSDL (Graphic Web Service Description Language), which tries to overcome this limitation. In the proposed language, based on XML, tags to identify user in-terface elements are introduced; thanks to such tags, a web service presentation can be specified, also permitting its visualization on different devices and according to different users’ characteristics and preferences.

Un'infrastruttura multimediale ed un metodo per guidare la visita ad un sito di interesse, ad esempio un sito di interesse culturale, archeologico o naturalistico. L'infrastruttura comprende dispositivi multimediali portatili aventi mezzi integrati per rilevare il segnale GPS e dotati di alloggiamenti per ricevere schede di memoria rimovibili. Nelle schede rimovibili sono memorizzati preventivamente i contenuti informativi relativi al sito; almeno uno dei dispositivi multimediali consente inoltre di memorizzare un file di registro contenente informazioni relative al percorso seguito. L'infrastruttura multimediale, di costo limitato, e il metodo di guida per la visita di un sito di interesse culturale possono essere utilizzati in modo particolarmente flessibile, vale a dire non solo come ausilio di guida a turisti o visitatori in genere, ma anche per applicazioni didattiche, ludiche e/o di intrattenimento in genere. L’infrastruttura multimediale e il metodo di guida possono essere adattati facilmente a diversi siti.