Report on NSF science of design team project: "A meta-design framework for participative software systems"

Abstract

Our research explores meta-design as an innovative framework in the design of an emerging type of software-intensive systems called participative software systems. The fundamental challenge facing this approach is achieving the best fit between the software system and its ever-changing context of use, problems, domains, users, and communities of users. Our objective is to define the scientific foundation for designing participative software systems: socio-technical environments that are capable of coping with emergent needs in the context of personally meaningful activities and that empower users, as owners of problems, to engage actively and collaboratively in continual development. © CGU 2007.