Towards multi-design of situated service-oriented systems

This paper discusses ongoing changes to the boundaries and roles of design and run time in the software lifecycle. Specifically, it focuses on changes caused by the emergence of situated systems in open pervasive computing environments. Clearly, such changes have a direct repercussion on the roles and tasks of system developers, stakeholders, and users. The paper proposes extensions to current software design notations, concerning (a) service discovery and ways to scope it to user-defined physical locations, and (b) the ability to incorporate and shed features and behaviors at run time, depending on which users are present and on their goals, and including the ability to resolve conflicts between such goals. Five small but illustrative example systems demonstrate the benefits of these extensions.