Capitalizing on uncertainty, diversity and change by online individualization of functionality

Abstract

Uncertainty, diversity and change create endless streams of unexpected new opportunities. To seize those opportunities, new web-based systems are emerging that enforce participative design and empower end-users to take actively part in the creation and maintenance of functionality that fits specific needs and conditions. For example, Yahoo! Pipes is a "participative site" with visual online programming means for defining and readily deploying web-based services that fetch, aggregate and process web feeds. Standard and dedicated engineering tools for developing such web sites are however yet to be invented. This paper describes our software platform for their development by reuse and extension, while meeting the requirements of end-user accessibility, expressivity, interpretability, web compatibility, shareability and traceability as they appear in person-centric areas like Ambient Assisted Living. We allow dynamic and user-driven individualization of functionality by capturing at runtime, and processing complex interaction patterns that involve end-users, their physical environment and software components. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.