Advancing End User Development Through Metadesign - End User Computing Challenges and Technologies: Emerging Tools and Applications - page 158

as default. Moreover, the workshop allows the
physician to eliminate or add some tools, the
workshop permits this. Adding or deleting tools
and resizing the overview area are examples of
tailoring for individual work activities.
As already mentioned in the previous section,
tailoring for cooperative work refers to tailoring
activities needed to communicate efficiently and
effectively with colleagues, for example to shape
software artifacts made available to another
specialist of whom a consultation is requested.
In the following, we describe how a neurologist
may tailor the system in order to communicate
with a neuroradiologist and request a consultation
from the neuroradiologist.
As the field study revealed, in their daily work,
neurologists and neuroradiologists highlight parts
of EEG and/or MRI. As shown in Figure 6, in
the neurologist application workshop, a portion
of EEG can be selected from the EEG overview
area and automatically loaded in a specific win-
dow, called working bench , which appears in the
working area. The working bench is equipped
with a toolbar hosting the tools to be used by the
neurologist to study the EEG and prepare requests

of consultation to be sent to other specialists.
According to the principles at the basis of SSW
methodology, these tools resemble the real tools
the physicians use in their work practice.
Moreover, neurologists and neuroradiologists
request and provide consultations by indicating to
their colleagues parts of EEG and/or MRI which
may be of interest to formulate the diagnosis. This
kind of activity is supported by the application
workshops we have developed. For example, the
neurologist may find in the working bench two
different tools for selecting limited areas in the
portion of EEG: (1) one allows the physician
to circle the area of interest; and (2) the other
permits the physician to identify, through two
vertical red bars, a limited part of the selected
portion of EEG concerning a certain period of
time (see Figure 6).
A selected area can be annotated and the an-
notation exploited in supporting the collaboration
between specialists that want to reach a common
diagnosis. For example, if the neurologist needs
to consult a neuroradiologist, he makes a request
by opening a special type of annotation window,
called consulting window . This window permits

Figure 6. The application workshop prototype devoted to the neurologist