Advancing End User Development Through Metadesign - End User Computing Challenges and Technologies: Emerging Tools and Applications - page 161

session. Our approach foresees the participation
of all the stakeholders in the development of the
final system, each one according to their own
view, through the use of SSWs. Therefore, our
SSWs can be regarded like a new technique sup-
porting participatory design. In particular, the
use of prototypes permits the participation of end
users in the creation of software tools, that they
can tailor, customize, and program themselves in
line with participatory programming (Letondal
& Mackay, 2004). Participatory programming
is regarded like a way to transcend participatory
design, but exploits traditional techniques of par-
ticipatory design (in situ observations, interviews,
workshops) to allow representatives of end users
and software engineers to collaborate in develop-
ing and tailoring software tools.
Fischer et al. propose the SER (Seeding,
Evolutionary growth, Reseeding) process model
to design systems as seeds, with a subsequent
evolutionary growth, followed by a reseeding
phase. This model was used for the development
and evolution of the so-called DODEs (Domain-
Oriented Design Environments), which are “soft-
ware systems that support design activities within
particular domains and that are built specifically
to evolve” (Fischer, 1998, p. 447). The SER model
is currently adopted to support metadesign. For
example, it is at the based of the work described
in Carmien, Dawe, Fischer, Gorman, Kintsch,
and Sullivan (2005), where a system is first cre-
ated by metadesigners (software engineers) to be
used by caregivers who design and create scripts
supporting people with cognitive disabilities. As
in our approach, particular attention is put on
the kinds of users involved in the domain, and
customized environments are provided to them.
Co-evolution may also be sustained since tools
for automatic feedback and remote observations
are used to notify problems to the design team.
Our SSW approach has some similarities with
this work, but it emphasizes the need of providing
personalized environments to all stakeholders, in
terms of language, notation, layout, and interac-
tion possibilities.

In our approach, end users play a role similar
to handymen in MacLean, Kathleen, Lövstrand,
and Moran (1990). The handyman bridges between
workers (people using a computer application) and
computer professionals; she or he is able to work
alongside users and communicate their needs
to programmers. Similarly, representatives of
end users bridge between workers and computer
professionals, but are end users themselves. To
participate in SSWs development, they must be
provided with environments that are adapted to
their culture, skills, and articulatory abilities. Be-
sides the projects in the medical domain already
discussed in this chapter, in Costabile, Fogli,
Fresta, Mussio, and Piccinno (2004), we describe
an environment devoted to mechanical engineers
who were the representatives of end users involved
in the development of the application workshop
devoted to assembly-line operators.
Karasti (2001) explores the integration of
work practice and system design and insists on
increasing the sensitivity of system design to-
wards everyday work practice. She characterizes
work practice by describing the complex social
organization, technological mediation, knowl-
edge and meaning as socially constructed, and
the intertwined nature of the unfolding activities
in which all these aspects are joined. Everyday
work practice has historically been invisible in
design. We agree that an understanding of cur-
rent work practice is useful in the design of new
technologies. Moreover, two different bodies
of knowledge are explored in Karasti (2001) to
make work practice visible and intelligible for
system design: the actual work activities and
knowledge of practitioners and what is considered
relevant information for requirements analysis in
system design. Thus, the challenge is to dissolve
the barriers existing between designer and user
knowledge, and to search for adequate methods
to secure the inclusion of practitioner and work
practice knowledge in design.
Research with similar interests in work practice
has been carried out in studies that intertwine