End user mashups: analytical framework

Abstract

The academic area of End User Development (EUD) aims to support non-programmers when they attempt to develop their own software in both organizational and leisure context. The EUD community has gathered a wealth of expertise in creating socio-technical systems and user-centric software design environments in pursuit of this aim. Some of this expertise is highly relevant to the creation of software mashups, especially when the latter are oriented towards non-programmers. To facilitate the exchange of ideas between these two areas, we have initiated the development of an analytical framework bridging the perspectives of service-based software development and EUD. The framework aims to serve as a tool to analyze efforts aiming to open up mashups to non-programmers, and to compare them along different dimensions, highlighting sectors which require further input and development. In this position paper we present the first iteration of developing the framework, focusing on two dimensions of a table -- EUD and Service-Oriented Development. The different stages and activities of the Service-Oriented Development provide the different rows of the table. The columns are formed by five aspects of End User Development which we find particularly relevant in this context. To demonstrate the framework in action, we report on a classification exercise which took place during the second workshop on End User Development for Services in 2011 (see www.eud4services.org).