Work practices and organizational processes vary widely and evolve constantly. The technological infrastructure has to follow, allowing or even supporting these changes. Traditional approaches to software engineering reach their limits whenever the full spectrum of user requirements cannot be anticipated or the frequency of changes makes software reengineering cycles too clumsy to address all the needs of a specific field of application. Moreover, the increasing importance of ‘infrastructural’ aspects, particularly the mutual dependencies between technologies, usages, and domain competencies, calls for a differentiation of roles beyond the classical user–designer dichotomy. End user development (EUD) addresses these issues by offering lightweight, use-time support which allows users to configure, adapt, and evolve their software by themselves. EUD is understood as a set of methods, techniques, and tools that allow users of software systems who are acting as non-professional software developers to 1 create, modify, or extend a software artifact. While programming activities by non-professional actors are an essential focus, EUD also investigates related activities such as collective understanding and sense-making of use problems and solutions, the interaction among end users with regard to the introduction and diffusion of new configurations, or delegation patterns that may also partly involve professional designers.
Editors and Affiliations
University of Siegen, Siegen, Germany
Volkmar Pipek
College of Information Sciences and Technology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, USA
Mary Beth Rosson
Philips Research Europe, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Boris Ruyter
Faculty of Information System and New Media, University of Siegen, Siegen, Germany
Volker Wulf
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: End-User Development
Book Subtitle: 2nd International Symposium, IS-EUD 2009, Siegen, Germany, March 2-4, 2009, Proceedings
Editors: Volkmar Pipek, Mary Beth Rosson, Boris Ruyter, Volker Wulf