User Driven Modelling Justification

There are many computer literate people who are experts in a particular domain. Given the opportunity they will develop their own software (Scaffidi, 2005). There is a need in many domains for people to create software such as engineering models, scientific taxonomies, business systems, and in the arts. Examples of software systems that enable creation of models without necessitating code writing are spreadsheets, visual web development systems, and database management systems. Crapo et al (2002) explain the need for a methodology for creation of systems to enable more collaborative approaches to modelling by domain expert end-users that make use of structured and visualised information. Peirce (1904) explained that systems can be represented logically by humans, and this applies to software development and information representation on computers. Thus it could be made possible to represent systems with natural and visual languages. Though Nurminen et al (2003) argue that people prefer usability over automation, it is possible to achieve both by providing a stepped translation capability that ensures users are constantly kept informed of the steps taken. This approach is advocated by (Johnson, 2004). Automated translation from a people-centred view of information to software for computers can aid in software development by domain expert end-users and help ensure they can communicate models directly to computers. Software developers can then concentrate mainly on creating systems that enable domain experts to develop software, rather than developing individual software models on behalf of domain experts, which is difficult and prone to communication problems.

References

Crapo, A. W., Waisel, L. B., Wallace, W. A., Willemain, T. R., 2002. Visualization and Modelling for Intelligent Systems. In: C. T. Leondes, ed. Intelligent Systems: Technology and Applications, Volume I Implementation Techniques, 2002 pp 53-85.

Johnson, P., 2004. Interactions, Collaborations and breakdowns. In: ACM International Conference Proceeding Series; Proceedings of the 3rd annual conference on Task models and diagrams Vol 86 Prague, Czech Republic. - http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1045448&coll=GUIDE&dl=GUIDE&CFID=17319495&CFTOKEN=29205382&ret=1Fulltext [Accessed 17^th February 2008].

Nurminen, J. K., Karaonen, O., Hatonen, K., 2003. What makes expert systems survive over 10 years-empirical evaluation of several engineering applications. Expert Systems with Applications 24(2) pp 199-211. - http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/630566.html [Accessed 17^th February 2008].

Peirce, C.S., 1906. Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmaticism [online]. Available from: http://www.existentialgraphs.com/peirceoneg/prolegomena.htm [Accessed 17^th February 2008].

Scaffidi, C., Shaw, M., Myers, B., 2005. Estimating the Numbers of End-users and End-user Programmers. In: IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, (VL/HCC'05): 207-214 Dallas, Texas. - http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~cscaffid/papers/eu_20050923_vlhcc.pdf [Accessed 17^th February 2008].