Towards the Unification of Computational Thinking and EUDability: Two Cases from Healthcare

Abstract

This paper presents a study about the mapping of the EUDability of End-User Development (EUD) tools with the Computational Thinking (CT) skills of users. This mapping provides an approach to evaluate the suitability of a EUD environment in supporting people performing their daily work while managing and exploiting EUD tools. EUDability is a construct encompassing different dimensions that need to be assessed through a careful scrutiny by human-computer interaction experts, while CT skills should mirror those dimensions from the point of view of assessing the level of ability of users in managing problems with a computational thinking attitude. Moving from the healthcare domain, we present two cases: a tool for geriatric professionals supporting them in the preparation of cognitive exercises for elderly patients; and a tool for pharmacists, which empowers them to create robot programs related to the preparation of personalized medications. These cases have been exploited to show how to unify the EUDability assessment with the CT skills assessment. In particular, the application of the EUDability evaluation method for each tool, as well as the administration of the Computational Thinking Scale to domain experts are shown. The results of the two assessments are reported and discussed, together with the limitations of the present study. The results show the goodness of fit of the proposed EUD tools in the healthcare domain.