software Shaping Workshops (SSWs)
described in this paper are s o f i a r e environments designed to support various activities of End-User Development (EUD) and tailoring. A design methodolog). to create easy-todevelop-and-tailor Visual Interactive Svstems that are organised asSSWs is illustrated. Users of an interactive system are in many cases experts in some domain different from Computer Science, who need to perform some task with the aid ofthe computer system. The design methodalagv allows users to directly collaborate to the system design and tailoring process to face co-evolution of users and systems. The srrategv feasibility is discussed, outlining its implementation through a web-based prototype.
In several computer applications, end-users are experts in a specific domain, not necessarily experts in computer science, who use computer environments to perform their daily tasks. In this paper we present a methodology for designing interactive systems based on the development of multimedia and multimodal environments for supporting the activities of such domain-expert users. We call these environments Software Shaping Workshops: they aim at easing the way people program and interact with computers, thus allowing domain-expert users to develop software applications without the burden of using a traditional programming language, but using high level visual languages tailored to their needs. It is shown how this design methodology is easily applicable through the software tool BANCO
This paper proposes a new effective strategy for designing and implementing interactive systems overcoming culture, skill and situation hurdles in HumanComputer Interaction (HCI). The strategy to identify and reduce these hurdles is developed in the framework of a methodology based on a recently introduced model of HCI, and exploits the technological innovations of XML (Extensible Markup Language). HCI is modelled as a cyclic process in which the user and the interactive system communicate by materializing and interpreting a sequence of messages. The interaction process is formalized by specifying both the physical message appearance and the computational aspect of the interaction. This formalization allows the adoption of notation traditionally adopted by users in their workplaces as the starting point of the interactive system design. In this way, the humansystem interaction language takes into account the users' culture. Moreover, the methodology permits user representatives to build a hierarchy of systems progressively adapted to users' situations, skills and habits, according to the work organization in the domain considered. The strategy is proved to be effective by describing how to implement it using BANCO (Browsing Adaptive Network for Changing user Operativity), a feasibility prototype based on XML, which allows the hierarchy implementation and system adaptations. Several examples from an environmental case under study are used throughout the paper to illustrate the methodology and the effectiveness of the technology adopted.
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