Rethinking the Software Life Cycle: About the Interlace of Different Design and Development Activities

Software engineering research addresses professional ways of designing, developing and implementing software. So far, software engineering more or less takes for granted that software professionals have control over the material implementation of a piece of software. Though users might use the software innovatively or even customise it, neither end-user tailoring (EUT) nor end-user development (EUD) are treated systematically regarding the impact of deferring part of the design to the use context on software development technologies or processes. Especially the development, adaptation and configuration of software products, software that is used by more than one user in more than one organisation – makes visible that different parallel ongoing development activities often distributed over more than two organisations have to be coordinated. To illustrate an

We are not yet there! in debate with Eevi Beck’s ‘P for Political’

This article argues that Participatory Design and what is outside known as ‘Scandinavian Approach’ to systems development implies a radical scientific and technology program: a change in the perception and implemetation of technology production and use. This implies not only to develop an understanding of the manifestation of power relations in and through ICT and software. It also requires new ways of developing and deploying technology. Without methods and processes that are applicable in non-academic contexts, the democratisation of technology remains an unfullfilled claim

Data for Participation and Participation as Data: Supporting Incremental Participatory Decision-Making in Urban Planning

Current literature on urban planning explores how to use ICT to support citizen participation. Advances in open data and its possibility to easily represent data on maps, opens up new opportunities to support participation and decision making in urban projects. This article investigates how spatial planners today use data to inform the participatory process. Looking at the par- ticipation process as collaboration between planners and citizens allows us to see the participation process itself as generating data that informs future deci- sions and processes. Based on a case study of a participatory process of an ur- ban renewal project, the article investigates the use of structured and unstruc- tured data for participation. The fieldwork is conducted using ethnographically inspired methods, based on participatory observations, interviews and docu- ment analysis. As a result, the incremental decisions, the resulting process, and the data used in this process are mapped out. Besides the need to accommodate heterogeneous data and to allow for integrated analysis of data specific to the neighborhood under development, the important result is that the participatory process itself generates data that informs the further process and the decisions that are part of it. The paper concludes with design implications for decision support for urban planning. In future research, the intention is to explore these implications in a Participatory Design process

Using recommendations to help novices to reuse design knowledge

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-21530-8_35. Copyright @ Springer 2011.The use of pattern languages is not so straightforward since its users have to identify the patterns they need, browsing the language and understanding both the benefits and trade-offs of each pattern as well as the relations and interactions it has with other patterns. Novice designers might benefit from tools that assist them in this learning task. In this paper we describe a recommendation tool embedded in a visual environment for pattern-based design which aims at suggesting patterns to help novice designers to produce better designs and understand the language.Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovatio