Evolutionary application development
tools to make tools and boundary crossing
pp. 151-171
in: Samuli Pekkola (ed), Reframing humans in information systems development, Berlin, Springer, 2011Abstract
When I use the term end user, I mean people who use computer applications in their daily activities, without being interested in computers per se (Costabile et al. 2003). In the rest of this paper "user" will sometimes be used instead of "end user" whenever it is clear that the reference is to end users. End-User Development (EUD) is software development conducted by end users, which allows them at some point to create or modify a software artifact. This activity is different from professional software development on the one hand and user-generated content in new media on the other, though it can be explained as a combination of the two. EUD is the (further) development of tools (rather than content) and carried out by users (rather than software engineers and programmers), while Evolutionary Application Development (EAD) is the type of EUD profiled in this paper. At InterMedia, University of Oslo we have developed demonstration prototypes and a conceptual framework for EAD. Here, I present four "snapshots" in the development of the EAD framework, which includes system-building efforts and results from empirical studies.