Minimalist Tools for End-User Development

Palestra da Profª Mary Beth Rosson

Título: Minimalist Tools for End-User Development

Mary Beth Rosson
Center for Human-Computer Interaction
The Pennsylvania State University
University Park, PA, USA

People want to get things done, not learn how to program. They want to use computational tools to solve problems, not create software artifacts that are elegant, extensible, or reusable. In some cases end users may not even care whether the software they create is (exactly!) correct. When we combine this starting motivation with a general lack of expertise in logic, control flow, and algorithm design, we face a number of basic challenges in building tools and other support for end-user development.

Minimalism is attractive as a design approach for end-user development because it addresses motivation and cognitive issues in concert. In this talk I will provide a brief overview of minimalist learning theory and several related design techniques (training wheels, view matcher, guided exploration, scaffolded examples). I will show how these techniques are being used to design end-user programming tools and activities, and discuss the implications for engaging active users in end-user development.

Short Bio
Mary Beth Rosson is Professor and Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies, in the College of Information Sciences and Technology at Pennsylvania State University; she also co-directs the Computer-Supported Collaboration and Learning Lab. Prior to joining Penn State in 2003, she was Professor of Computer Science at Virginia Tech for 10 years, and a Research Staff Member at IBM T. J. Watson Research Center for 11 years. Rosson is internationally known for her research and education in human-computer interaction, including participatory and scenario-based evaluation and design methods, computer-supported collaborative learning, and end-user development. She is author of Usability Engineering: Scenario-Based Development of Human-Computer Interaction (Morgan Kaufmann, 2002) and numerous articles, book chapters, and professional tutorials. She has served in many professional leadership roles, including conference chair for OOPSLA 2000, CHI 2007, and VL/HCC 2010. Rosson is a member of the CHI Academy and an ACM Distinguished Scientist.