INCOSE UK Bristol Event 28th September

An interesting event takes place on 28th September at University of the West of England. The title is 'The Rise and Fall of the Systems Engineering Lifecycle'. The event is organised by INCOSE - International Council on Systems Engineering.

Booking is online at - http://www.incoseonline.org.uk/EventBooking/AutoBooking/MainPage.aspx?CatID=Events&EventID=198

Details of the event are :-

"The Bristol Local Group Presents
'The Rise and Fall of the Systems Engineering Lifecycle'
Kicking off the new Bristol Local Group season, this event will examine how the nature of systems engineering changes across development lifecycles, how organisational roles and responsibilities adapt to suit, and what happens when there are mismatches between them. This interactive workshop will include an examination of the following questions:

•What tends to get missed in commonly used lifecycles?
•Where is the Systems Engineering focus and how does it shift?
•What information flows and networking between stakeholders and organisations is necessary and how is this encouraged?

Date: 28th September – 6.30pm for 7pm till 9pm
Location: Room 1N05, University of the West of England (UWE), Frenchay Campus, Bristol

NON-MEMBERS WELCOME."

Also an INCOSE conference takes place at Warwick in November, details are available at - http://www.incoseonline.org.uk/EventBooking/ASEC2011/General_Information.aspx?CatID=Events

"Annual Systems Engineering Conference (ASEC) 2011
9th-10th November 2011
Scarman Training and Conference Centre, University of Warwick, CV4 7AL

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'Doing Systems Engineering well'
The UK's premier Systems Engineering event will address key contemporary themes for a wide audience, and provide an excellent forum for networking, sharing experience and advancing the discipline."

PCCAT Exeter University Conference Paper June 8th 2011

This is the paper and presentation I gave for Postgraduate Conference for Computing: Applications and Theory (PCCAT 2011) - June 8th 2011 - http://www.pccat.ex.ac.uk/index.php?pid=1

The paper is titled - Requirements and software engineering for tree-based visualisation and modelling: A user driven approach

This is the link where I placed it in the University of the West of England Research Repository. The PowerPoint presentation I gave is also there. There are Word and PowerPoint 2007 files and also PDF versions. These are all available from this link - https://eprints.uwe.ac.uk/15077/.
This is the abstract -

Abstract

This paper is about potential to provide an interactive visual ontology/taxonomy based modelling system. The research is part of efforts to structure, manage, and enable understanding of complex engineering, business and/or scientific information to enable those involved to collaborate using a systems approach. The aim and objectives are to provide a taxonomy management system to close the link between requirements gathering and end-user modellers. The research is into modelling of product data structures. This research could be adapted to business process modelling, and biology taxonomy visualisation/representation. The modelling system was developed to assist decision support for problems such as wing and engine design. The methodology involves modelling using tree structured ontology based modelling. It is argued that visualising this structure enables improved Maintenance, Extensibility, Ease of Use, and Sharing of Information, and so enables better and more accessible modelling. This is achieved by uniting the software taxonomy structure with the structure of the domain to be modelled and visualised, and using Semantic Web technologies to link this with ontologies and to end-users for visualisation. This research assists with management of development, use, and re-use of software in order to make this an integrated process. The research brings together related fields of Semantic Web, End-User Programming, and Modelling, to assist domain expert end users.

Further information -

I've published my more general thoughts about the benefits of Postgraduate Conferences and Research Repositories to students, in the UK Vitae (organisation for research students and staff) - What's Up Doc Blog - http://www.vitae.ac.uk/researchers/346441/Whats-up-doc-blog-for-postgraduate-researchers.html. I publish my thoughts that are more general to all researchers rather than my specific research to there -this is my post to that blog - http://www.vitae.ac.uk/researchers/346441-406701/Getting-your-Research-Published---PostGraduate-Conferences.html.

Exeter University June 8th - PCCAT 2011 Timetable

This is the timetable for the Exeter University PCCAT Conference June 8th (Postgraduate Conference for Computing: Applications and Theory) -

Timetable and travel advice -

Programme (link to PDF doc) and Map - http://www.pccat.ex.ac.uk/on-the-day.php.

Programme (PDF doc) - http://www.pccat.ex.ac.uk/files/programme.pdf.

My talk is scheduled at 2.30 pm - This is -

"Requirements and Software Engineering for Tree-based Visualisation and Modelling - a User Driven Approach
Peter Hale, Tony Solomonides and Ian Beeson
University of the West of England, UWE"

This is my Revised abstract -

Abstract
This paper is about potential to provide an interactive visual ontology/taxonomy based modelling system. The research is part of efforts to structure, manage, and enable understanding of complex engineering, business and/or scientific information to enable those involved to collaborate using a systems approach. The aim and objectives are to provide a taxonomy management system to close the link between requirements gathering and end-user modellers. The research is into modelling of product data structures. This research could be adapted to business process modelling, and biology taxonomy visualisation/representation. The modelling system was developed to assist decision support for problems such as wing and engine design. The methodology involves modelling using tree structured ontology based modelling. It is argued that visualising this structure enables improved Maintenance, Extensibility, Ease of Use, and Sharing of Information, and so enables better and more accessible modelling. This is achieved by uniting the software taxonomy structure with the structure of the domain to be modelled and visualised, and using Semantic Web technologies to link this with ontologies and to end-users for visualisation. This research assists with management of development, use, and re-use of software in order to make this an integrated process. The research brings together related fields of Semantic Web, End-User Programming, and Modelling, to assist domain expert end users.

Postgraduate Conference for Computing: Applications and Theory (PCCAT 2011)

I have submitted a paper to this conference at Exeter University in June. These are the details of the conference - http://www.pccat.ex.ac.uk/ -

"Home Page
Welcome to the website of the second Postgraduate Conference for Computing: Applications and Theory (PCCAT 2011). Following the great success of PCCAT 2010, we are pleased to announce that the University of Exeter will host PCCAT on 8th June 2011.

PCCAT 2010 proved a great success, both in terms of networking and introducing the vital world of conferencing to postgraduate students.

We are inviting the submission of abstracts, which if accepted will be extended into either a short paper or a poster for presentation on the day. More details can be found on the Submissions Page

In the new year, we will be inviting interested parties to join the paper review panel, which will be responsible for reviewing and providing feedback for short papers. If this is something you feel you would be interested in, please contact us (details of how to contact the committee are here

We hope to see you at PCCAT 2011, and look forward to hearing from you.


Max Dupenois and David Walker
(PCCAT 2011 Programme Chairs)"

This is my Abstract for the paper -

"Abstract: This paper is about potential to provide an interactive visual taxonomy management system. It has been and is part of efforts to structure, manage, and enable understanding of complex engineering, business and/or scientific information to enable those involved to collaborate using a systems approach. The aim and objectives are to close the link between requirements gathering and end-user modellers. The main subject will be editing and display of product data structures (already implemented), business process modelling, and discussion of possible application to phylogenic/phylogenetic (biology taxonomy) knowledge. Modelling in all these areas could make possible new insights. This approach could also be used for public understanding work and visualisation, e-science, and information management. The aim is to apply novel end-user programming research to enable the editing, management, and representation of anything tree/taxonomy based by uniting the software taxonomy structure with the taxonomy structure of the domain to be modelled and visualised, and using Semantic Web technologies to link this with overall ontologies then to end-users for visualisation.

The purpose of this work is to ease management of development use, and re-use of software and make this a continuous integrated process.

To achieve the above aim what is necessary is to establish or link to a computing infrastructure for representation of complex, engineering, business, and scientific information. This kind of Computer Science/Software Engineering research allows for bringing together related fields of Semantic Web and ontology/taxonomy management, end-user programming, and visualisation and interaction with complex information. Then management of software development with and for such professionals can be eased and all be involved via the web.

Further, the structure and accessibility of Semantic Web technologies may also assist with broadening this approach to accessibility for people with various disabilities, and also for environmental modelling."

Bristol Knowledge Unconference 2009

The Bristol Knowledge Unconference in 2009 - http://www.craftivism.net/wiki/UnCraftivism/Bristol_Knowledge_Unconference_2009 - will be an UnCraftivism event, in association with the Craftivism Exhibition at the Arnolfini in Bristol.

Basic Info
Date: 12th - 13th December 2009
Time: TBC
Location: Arnolfini, Bristol
Organiser: Daniel Lewis
Email: danieljohnlewis [at] gmail [dot] com
Instigator: Rui Guerra
Helpers: ...
In collaboration with:

What is Bristol Knowledge Unconference?

Bristol Knowledge Unconference is an "Unconference" specifically about Knowledge. The first Bristol Knowledge Unconference was in September 2008, and involved about 50 people who talked about Knowledge from scientific and new-media perspectives.

The knowledge unconferences are "themed" around the general subject of Knowledge, which includes:

The Semantic Web / Linked Data / Hyperdata / Data Web
Web Science
Topic Maps
Information Architecture and Design
Knowledge Acquisition and Knowledge Management
Knowledge-Based Systems, Knowledge Engineering and Rule-Based Systems (etc)
Knowledge/Information Visualisation and Graphical User Interfaces
Knowledge-orientated Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
and maybe even, Object Oriented Databases

What will Bristol Knowledge Unconference 2009 be about?

This will be our second Bristol Knowledge Unconference. Our first one was very fun, and we hope to multiply that amount of fun - particularly as we'll be running alongside other groups involved in UnCraftivism.
As we will be in the Arnolfini, it has been decided to label this years Knowledge Unconference: The Art of Knowledge
Knowledge is both art and science. Everything we do with knowledge can be both beautiful and methodical. We will discuss these things, and talks will be established in order to think about these ideas. Other more general talks/demos are very much welcomed, no matter how arty or scientific they are. The idea of an Unconference is completely free-flowing, it is developed with minimal structure/organisation and also attempts to maximise the equality of the attendees.

We will be running simultaneously with other events happening during the unCraftivism weekend, see the Main Exhibition Page - http://www.craftivism.net/wiki/Main_Page - for more details.

I am definitely coming...
Feel free to put your name here if you know you will be attending:

Semantic Web Interest Group - SWIG-UK event, Bristol UK

==== SWIG-UK - A Semantic Web Community Event

Hewlett-Packard Bristol

We would like to invite users and developers interested in the
semantic web to attend a community event to be held at HP Labs
Bristol, UK on Tuesday 11 November 2008. This will be an opportunity
for you to meet other users and developers and to share experiences
with semantic web applications.

The day will a mixture of discussion, demos, short presentations,
with a few longer presentations if offered. The objective is to
allow people to share experiences of using the semantic web. The
agenda will be driven by the attendees; it is not limited to Jena
applications nor limited to the UK.

Please register early so we know there is critical mass for the event.

Registration: swig-uk-2008@sparql.net

Further Information - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/semanticweb-southwest/ - Directions: http://www.hpl.hp.com/bristol/directions.html.

Semantic Web Event

This Semantic Web event is being organised by Daniel Lewis, details are below -

Friday 5th September 2008
Time: 14:00 - 18:00
Bristol Knowledge Unconference -
Location: eOffice Bristol, 1st Floor Prudential Buildings, 11-19 Wine Street Bristol, BS1 2PH.

A few more bits of information are available at:
http://vanirsystems.com/danielsblog/2008/07/22/date-set-for-bristol-knowledge-unconference/.

You can sign up for the event at:
http://knowledgeunconference.eventwax.com/bristol-knowledge-unconference.

Further information -

Daniel Lewis - Bristol Knowledge Unconference: A small progress update - http://vanirsystems.com/danielsblog/2008/07/15/bristol-knowledge-unconference-a-small-progress-update/ -

http://vanirsystems.com/danielsblog/2008/07/10/bristol-knowledge-unconference/

Daniel Lewis - I am organising a "Knowledge Unconference" in Bristol, which is loosely attached to the "Semantic Web South-West" Group.

The idea will be similar to a BarCamp, except that it is a lot lighter, more social, more hands-on. It will also be only half-a-day long. Plus it will be "themed" around the general subject of Knowledge. So for example:

The Semantic Web / Linked Data / Hyperdata / Data Web
Topic Maps
Information Architecture and Design
Knowledge Acquisition
Knowledge-Based Systems, Knowledge Engineering and Rule-Based Systems (etc)
Knowledge Visualisation
and maybe even, Object Oriented Databases

The SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics Conference) is on this August.

SVG Open 2008 - http://svgopen.org/2008/index.php - 6th International Conference on Scalable Vector Graphics - 26th to 28th August - Nuremberg - Germany - The world conference on SVG will this year take place in the center of Nuremberg. Located in the south of Germany.

I have an SVG page at - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/SVG/SVG.htm - with more information.

Usability and Reuse in software design

This is a very useful and informative extract from a usability conference presentation and examines how reusability can be provided in systems, the reference for this is below the post.

Degler (2006) asks the Questions –

"Have you had insights and observations that go beyond the scope of a particular system or site you are working on?

Have you seen the same user needs and challenges cropping up on three or four projects, and realized that you are seeing a pattern?

Have you worked on standards for design and development of web sites or information that need to be applied across many different projects and services?

Have you become involved in conversations with managers where you have the opportunity to share how "things could be better" for users overall, beyond the boundaries of a single site?"

This illustrates how to create and test a User Driven Modelling approach, the intention of this approach is to create a high level abstraction that can be reused to solve many problems with a common pattern.

Degler, D., 2006. The Usability Professional as Visionary / Strategist. In: UPA DC usability conference, October 2006. http://www.ipgems.com/present/degler_visiontalk_upadc2006.pdf.

Dagstuhl Seminar End-User Software Engineering - Part 4 - Final Part

End-User Software Engineering - Dagstuhl Seminar - Summary - http://www.dagstuhl.de/en/program/calendar/semhp/?semnr=2007081 - PDF Abstracts and links to papers - http://eusesconsortium.org/docs/dagstuhl_2007.pdf - Margaret M. Burnett, Gregor Engels, Brad A. Myers and Gregg Rothermel - From 18.01.07 to 23.02.07

In 'Meta-User Interfaces for Ambient Spaces: Can Model-Driven-Engineering Help?' http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/frontdoor.php?source_opus=1082 Joëlle Coutaz explains how Model Driven Engineering and Service Oriented Architecture can be combined -

"Our approach to UI plasticity brings together MDE (Model Driven Engineering) and SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) within a unified framework that covers both the development stage and the runtime phase of interactive systems."

Coutaz also explains that -

"An interactive system is a graph of models related by mappings and transformations."

This would fit in well with the structure of RDF (Resource Description Framework) a Semantic Web standard which is also a graph structure.

In 'Model-Driven Development for End-Users, too!?' http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/frontdoor.php?source_opus=1085 Gregor Engels of University of Paderborn explains that UML (Unified Modeling Language) should be extended to allow development of user interfaces in order to assist end-users to program -

"The UML is strong in modelling the internal functionality of a software system, but weak in modelling user interface aspects of a system. Thus, with respect to the well-known MVC (Model-View-Controller) pattern, the UML supports the Model aspect, while neglecting the View and Controller aspect."

In 'Position Paper for Dagstuhl 2007 EUSE Workshop' http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/frontdoor.php?source_opus=1094 Mary Beth Rosson of Pennsylvania State University explains their development of a drag and drop interface for web based visual programming.

In 'Rethinking the Software Life Cycle: About the Interlace of Different Design and Development Activities' http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/frontdoor.php?source_opus=1084 Yvonne Dittrich of University of Copenhagen argues that more research is needed into the software lifecycle and methods and tools needed for end-user developers, especially when they are collaborating. These end-users often need to adjust old software for new purposes.

In 'Software environments for supporting End-User Development' http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/frontdoor.php?source_opus=1081 Maria Francesca Costabile, Antonio Piccinno also explain that new methodologies and environments are required for supporting end-user collaborative development.

In 'What is an End-User Software Engineer?' http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/frontdoor.php?source_opus=1080 Steven Clarke of Microsoft examines the characteristics of end-user developers in order to assist with meeting their needs.

My home page is http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/.

I have a page on End-User Programming at http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/EndUserProgramming.htm.

Dagstuhl Seminar End-User Software Engineering - Part 3

End-User Software Engineering - Dagstuhl Seminar - Summary - http://www.dagstuhl.de/en/program/calendar/semhp/?semnr=2007081 - PDF Abstracts and links to papers - http://eusesconsortium.org/docs/dagstuhl_2007.pdf - Margaret M. Burnett, Gregor Engels, Brad A. Myers and Gregg Rothermel - From 18.01.07 to 23.02.07

In 'Exploiting Domain-Specific Structures For End-User Programming Support Tools' http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/frontdoor.php?source_opus=1086 Robin Abraham and Martin Erwig of Oregon State University integrate spreadsheet modelling into the UML modelling process.

In 'Interdisciplinary Design Research for End-User Software Engineering' http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/frontdoor.php?source_opus=1078 Alan Blackwell explains the need for interdisciplinary research on the end-user programming problem to identify techniques within software engineering that can assist with this problem.

In 'Meta-Design: A Conceptual Framework for End-User Software Engineering' http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/frontdoor.php?source_opus=1087 Gerhard Fischer of University of Colorado, Center for LifeLong Learning and Design (L3D) explains the concept of Meta-Design -

"Meta-design is an emerging conceptual framework aimed at defining and creating social and technical infrastructures in which new forms of collaborative design can take place. It extends the traditional notion of system design beyond the original development of a system. It is grounded in the basic assumption that future uses and problems cannot be completely anticipated at design time, when a system is developed."

Fischer also explains that it is the mismatches between their needs and the software support that enables new understandings.

Fischer argues the need for allowing end-users to design software -

"A great amount of new media is designed to see humans only as consumers. The importance of meta-design rests on the fundamental belief that humans (not all of them, not at all times, not in all contexts) want to be and act as designers in personally meaningful activities. Meta-design encourages users to be actively engaged in generating creative extensions to the artifacts given to them and has the potential to break down the strict counterproductive barriers between consumers and designers."

Fischer also argues that software development can never be completely delegated to software professionals because domain experts are the only people that fully understand the domain specific tasks that must be performed.

He puts forward a hypothesis that this emphasis on end-user development also changes the emphasis on testing -

"Software testing is conducted differently. Because domain expert developers themselves are the primary users, complete testing is not as important as in the case when the developers are not the users."

He also argues for an approach to enabling end-user programming possible that makes it interesting to end-users -

"Many times the problem is not that programming is difficult, but that it is boring (as we were told by an artist). Highly creative owners of problems struggle and learn tools that are useful to them, rather than believing in the alternative of "ease-of-use," which limits them to preprogrammed features."

My home page is http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/.

I have a page on End-User Programming at http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/EndUserProgramming.htm.

Dagstuhl Seminar End-User Software Engineering - Part 2

End-User Software Engineering - Dagstuhl Seminar - Summary - http://www.dagstuhl.de/en/program/calendar/semhp/?semnr=2007081 - PDF Abstracts and links to papers - http://eusesconsortium.org/docs/dagstuhl_2007.pdf - Margaret M. Burnett, Gregor Engels, Brad A. Myers and Gregg Rothermel - From 18.01.07 to 23.02.07, the Dagstuhl Seminar 07081 End-User Software Engineering was held in the International Conference and Research Center (IBFI), Schloss Dagstuhl. During the seminar, several participants presented their current research, and ongoing work and open problems were discussed.

I have been reading this abstracts paper from the Dagstuhl Seminar End-User Software Engineering and it has lots of interesting points to make.

In 'End-User Design' http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/frontdoor.php?source_opus=1099 Professor Alexander Repenning of University of Lugano explains the need for enhancements to UML (Unified Modeling Language) to aid end-user programming.

He makes the point that

"Visual programming languages using drag and drop mechanisms as programming approach make it virtually impossible to create syntactic errors."

So -

"With the syntactic challenge being – more or less – out of the way we can focus on the semantic level of end-user programming."

In 'End-User Development Techniques for Enterprise Resource Planning Software Systems' http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/frontdoor.php?source_opus=1097 Michael Spahn, Stefan Scheidl, and Todor Stoitsev explain SAP research into End-User Programming, they explain -

"End-users of ERP systems are domain experts but not necessarily IT professionals, limiting their ability to adapt the software by themselves to their own needs and forcing them to indirectly influence the adaptation processes by communicating their needs to IT professionals. Empowering the end-users to adapt the software by themselves is an important step in reducing customization costs and enabling high-quality tailoring of software and working environments to the needs of modern information and knowledge workers."

They explain that users must be empowered to explore, process, and analyse information in a user friendly way, and create and adapt reports and queries. An abstraction layer should ease this by hiding technical details to allow for concentrating on business needs.

In 'End-User Software Engineering and Professional End-User Developers' http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/frontdoor.php?source_opus=1095 Judith Segal of the Open University examines issues and problems in Professional end-user development, the author explains -

"These developers are distinguished from other end-user developers in two ways. The first is that, consistent with their being familiar with formal notations and logical scientific reasoning, they tend to have few problems with coding per se. The second is that, as a class, they have a history of developing their own software which long predates the advent of the PC."

In 'End-User Software Engineering Position Paper' http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/frontdoor.php?source_opus=1092 by Henry Lieberman of MIT Media Laboratory he asks -

"Why is it so much harder to program a computer than simply to use a computer application? I can't think of any good reason why this is so; we just happen to have a tradition of arcane programming languages and mystically complex software development techniques. We can do much better."

He goes on to explain -

"HCI has amassed an enormous body of knowledge about what makes interfaces easy to use, and this has been applied widely to many computer applications for end users. Oddly, little of this has been applied to making interfaces for programming easier to use. Non-experts tend to believe that programmers practice a kind of voodoo, perceived to be naturally arcane and mysterious. Since they can handle it so well, programmers aren't perceived as needing ease of use. But we all pay the price for this misconception."

Lieberman explains the goal of this research -

"Finally, as much as is possible, we should make this process as automatic as we can, though the use of program transformation, dependency maintenance, automated reasoning, mixed-initiative interfaces, visualization, and machine learning. Otherwise, I think it will be too much overhead for a non-expert user themselves to keep track of the myriad facets that software development entails. If we succeed in this, people will become End-User Software Engineers without their even realizing it."

My home page is http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/.

I have a page on End-User Programming at http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/EndUserProgramming.htm.

Dagstuhl Seminar End-User Software Engineering - Part 1

End-User Software Engineering - Dagstuhl Seminar - Summary - http://www.dagstuhl.de/en/program/calendar/semhp/?semnr=2007081 - PDF Abstracts and links to papers - http://eusesconsortium.org/docs/dagstuhl_2007.pdf - Margaret M. Burnett, Gregor Engels, Brad A. Myers and Gregg Rothermel - From 18.01.07 to 23.02.07, the Dagstuhl Seminar 07081 End-User Software Engineering was held in the International Conference and Research Center (IBFI), Schloss Dagstuhl. During the seminar, several participants presented their current research, and ongoing work and open problems were discussed.

I have been reading this abstracts paper from the Dagstuhl Seminar End-User Software Engineering and it has lots of interesting points to make.

In the introduction the report http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/frontdoor.php?source_opus=1098 states - "The number of end users creating software is far larger than the number of professional programmers. These end users are using various languages and programming systems to create software in forms such as spreadsheets, dynamic web applications, and scientific simulations. This software needs to be sufficiently dependable, but substantial evidence suggests that it is not."

This is a good point, and can be related to a point in 'Barriers to Successful End-User Programming' http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/frontdoor.php?source_opus=1091 by Andrew Ko http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~ajko Carnegie Mellon University about end-user programmers

"Some of them are scientists, some are artists, others are educators and other types of professionals. One thing that all of these people have in common is that their goals are entirely unrelated to producing code."

Andrew Ko explains how this causes a problem -

"the fact that end-user programmers are motivated by their domain and not by the merits of producing high-quality, dependable code, means that most of the barriers that end users encounter in the process of writing a program are perceived as distractions. This is despite the fact that such barriers can represent fundamental problems in end-users' program's or their understanding of how to use a programming language effectively."

the problem is -

"how can tools help end-user programmers' improve their programs' dependability, while allowing them to remain focused on their goals, rather than their code?"

An important part of the solution is to visualise the whole program execution not just the output. Andrew Ko states -

"when a user was trying to diagnose their program's failure, they had to base their hypothesis of what caused the failure just on what they could see in the program's output, rather than on information about the program's execution. In many of these situations, users premature decisions led to errors."

A further problem is that of programs which were intended to be temporary and owned by a particular person becoming central to a company, this often happens with spreadsheets. Ko explains -

"We frequently hear anecdotes about how a one-off excel spreadsheet meant to be temporary became the centerpiece of some accounting logic. How often do such organizational dependencies occur, and how important do such program's become? What can tools do to help the future owners of these programs learn about the program's history and design?"

Mark D Gross explains Carnegie Mellon University work involving end-user programming by designers using diagrams and scratchpads in "Designers Need End User Software Engineering" http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/frontdoor.php?source_opus=1090.

In "End User Programming for Scientists: Modelling Complex Systems" http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/frontdoor.php?source_opus=1077 Andrew Begel of Microsoft Research explains -

"Model creation cannot be turned over to a programmer-for-hire without causing the model to become a black box. In order to ensure the validity of the model and stand behind its experimental results, the scientist must be intimately knowledgeable about its innards as well as its outward behaviors."

Text based Computer languages are often too obscure for end-user programmers, Bagel explains -

"Learning a text-based programming language is difficult for novices who want to be programmers. In the first few weeks of learning a language, syntax rules are often the most difficult to comprehend, with semantics interleaved. Non-programmers face these problems, in addition to lacking an engineering mindset to help form mental models of how they want to make the computer do what they want."

In 'End-user (further) development: A case for negotiated semiotic engineering' http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/frontdoor.php?source_opus=1083 Clarisse Sieckenius de Souza of Departamento de Informática, PUC-Rio makes the Quote Liberman et al -

"We think that over the next few years, the goal of human-computer interaction (HCI) will evolve from just making system easy to use (even though that goal has not yet been completely achieved) to making systems that are easy to develop"

From

Lieberman, H.; Parternò, F.; Klann, M.; Wulf, V. (2006) End-user development: An emerging paradigm. In End-User Development (Lieberman, Paternò and Wulf, Eds.). Springer. p. 1.

My home page is http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/.

I have a page on End-User Programming at http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/EndUserProgramming.htm.