Trial by water: creating Hurricane Katrina “person locator” web sites

Abstract. We interviewed six people who led teams that created web sites enabling Hurricane Katrina survivors to report their status. We learned that interviewees did not discover and communicate with other teams when they started their projects, which resulted in redundant sites. The absence of a shared task impeded trust between teams, ultimately inhibiting data collection and aggregation. Moreover, communication within teams was problematic; developers who had adequate technical skills to work alone were more positive about their sites ’ success compared to developers who had to shore up skill weaknesses through collaboration. These problems did not simply result from team leaders’ over-sized egos, since site creators were generally motivated by concern for other people instead of self-interested motivations. Rather, these problems highlight the need for improved development methods and systems to help developers discover and communicate with other teams ’ leaders in order to collaborate on widely distributed, time-critical projects. 1

Microsoft Corporation

Most programs today are written not by professional software developers, but by people with expertise in other domains working towards goals supported by computation. For example, a teacher might write a grading spreadsheet to save time grading or an interaction designer might use an interface builder to test some user interface design ideas. Although these end-user programmers may not have the same goals as professional developers, they do face many of the same software engineering challenges, including requirements gathering, de-sign, specification, reuse, testing, and debugging. This article summarizes and classifies research on these activities, defining the area of End-User Software Engineering (EUSE) and related terminology. The article then discusses empirical research about end-user software engineering activities and the technologies designed to support them. The article also addresses challenges in de-signing EUSE tools, including the power of surprise i

Challenges, Motivations, and Success Factors in the Creation of Hurricane Katrina “Person Locator ” Web Sites

Abstract. We interviewed six people who led teams that created web sites enabling Hurricane Katrina survivors to report their status. We learned that interviewees did not discover and communicate with other teams when they started their projects, which resulted in redundant sites. The absence of a shared task impeded trust between teams, ultimately inhibiting data collection and aggregation. Moreover, communication within teams was problematic; developers who had adequate technical skills to work alone were more positive about their sites ’ success compared to developers who had to shore up skill weaknesses through collaboration. These problems did not simply result from team leaders’ over-sized egos, since site creators were generally motivated by concern for other people instead of self-interested motivations. Rather, these problems highlight the need for improved development methods and systems to help developers discover and communicate with other teams ’ leaders in order to collaborate on widely distributed, time-critical projects