AN ARCHITECTURE FOR END-USER DEVELOPMENT SUPPORTING GLOBAL COMMUNITIES

Increasingly organizations require their members to act not only as end users but also as developers of their tools, i.e. to create, shape and adapt the software artifacts they use without becoming computer experts. In this way, they move from being mere consumers to active producers of knowledge and developers of software artifacts. This leads to an evolution of the work environment and the organization and force the designers to adapt the software artifacts to meet the needs of the end users and to manage this co-evolution of users and software. Moreover, the achievements of social media, Web 2.0 and the advanced information technologies lead to an upward diffusion of global communities, geographically distributed, that collaborate asynchronously on the same design projects. The members of global communities belong to different cultures, therefore cultural boundaries need to be transcended. The mantra "making all voices heard" has to be evolved into "making all voices heard and understood" to allow the proper participation of end users to knowledge and software artifacts creation, sharing and evolution. To respond to these challenges, the thesis presents a semiotic model for end-user development and a Web architecture that supports 1) an interaction localized to end user’s culture, domain of activity and digital platform in use, and 2) the collaborative creation and evolution of knowledge and software artifacts. The architecture is Ajax-like, component-based, Web service-based, and underpins re-use and evolution of software.