131,218 research outputs found
Enabling Domain Experts to Develop Usable Software Artifacts
No full textEnd-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
Fostering participation and co-evolution in sentient multimedia systems
No full textUser 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
Integrating ChatGPT with Blockly for End-User Development of Robot Tasks
No full textThis paper presents an End-User Development environment for collaborative robot programming, which integrates Open AI ChatGPT with Google Blockly. Within this environment, a user, who is neither expert in robotics nor in computer programming, can define the items characterizing the application domain (e.g., objects, actions, and locations) and define pick-and-place tasks involving these items. Task definition can be achieved with a combination of natural language and block-based interaction, which exploits the computational capabilities of ChatGPT and the graphical interaction features offered by Blockly, to check the correctness of generated robot programs and modify them through direct manipulation
Empowering Worker-Robot Collaboration: Leveraging LLMs for Extracting and Visualizing Robot Task Metrics
No full textIn the context of Industry 5.0, which is characterized by a close integration between digital technology, industrial production, and human-centered design, collaborative robots emerge as key players. These robots are no longer isolated machines but an integral part of an interconnected ecosystem, where the fluidity of data plays a crucial role. Collaborative robots facilitate flexibility, efficiency, and safety in operations. However, this also introduces novel programming and data management challenges. A distinctive feature of collaborative robots is their ability to be programmed and used by non-expert users. This democratization of access to robotics offers significant advantages but also requires careful design of tools and interfaces to enable easy access to the data generated by the robots. In this context, the user interface assumes a pivotal role in ensuring that even those lacking programming expertise can fully benefit from the capabilities of collaborative robots and the da..
Modelling Complex User Experiences in Distributed Interaction Environments
No full textThe focus of this work is that of the so-called mixed reality domain, where interaction is increasingly becoming a complex matter in which the user navigates the different locations of a 3D virtual or real world, manipulates objects and accesses content with different degrees of heterogeneity and synchronization. In order to control such complexity we specify the 3D environment by a multilevel control finite state machine using the state-charts notation and we model the interaction with the environment and the multimedia content communicated to the user through the concepts of experience process and experience pattern. A set of distributed software agents log and process data related to the user experience for controlling interaction and data presentation at run-time
Environments to support context and emotion aware visual interaction
No full textThe interaction with software systems is often affected by many types of hurdles that induce users to make errors and mistakes, and to break the continuity of their reasoning while carrying out a working task with the computer. As a consequence, negative emotional states, such as frustration, dissatisfaction, anxiety, may arise. In this paper, we illustrate how the Software Shaping Workshop (SSW) methodology can represent a solution to the problem of developing interactive systems that are correctly perceived and interpreted by end-users, thus becoming more acceptable and favouring positive emotional states. In the methodology, a key role is played by domain-expert users, i.e. experts in a specific domain, not necessarily experts in computer science. Domain-expert users’ skills and background, including their knowledge of the domain and users’ needs and habits, are exploited to create context and emotion aware visual interactive systems. Examples of these systems are illustrated by referring to a case study in the automation field
What Users See Is What Users Need
No full textNowadays, an increasing number of people who are not expert in computer science are willing to use computers to perform tasks related to their own professional activities. However, the great number of customization possibilities, usually offered by interactive systems in a language alien to the user experience, often disorient users and create dissatisfaction, anxiety, and/or frustration. The Software Shaping Workshops methodology has been developed to overcome such problems by the creation of a hierarchy of tailorable environments devoted to end-users, possibly experts in some application domain. Such environments are built adopting notations and languages of the domain at hand and favour the externalization of the implicit knowledge that users exploit to perform their work. Being specific for a certain community of users, such environments present all and only the tools and functionalities that users really need, in accordance with the acronym WUSIWUN (What Users See Is What Users Need). An example in the automation system field is illustrated to demonstrate the main features of our approach
Co-evolution of End-User Developers and Systems in Multi-tiered Proxy Design Problems
No full textThis 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
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