Analysing How Users Prefer to Model Contextual Event-Action Behaviours in Their Smartphones

Abstract. Developing context-dependent applications involves indicating the relevant contextual events and the corresponding actions. Based on an analysis of the usability and expressiveness of three Android apps for developing such applications, we have started a study that aims to identify a general solution able to better represent how users classify the relevant concepts in order to facilitate their manipulation during development. We report on a card sorting experiment carried out with 18 users for this purpose, and an analysis of its results, with sug-gestions for improving current designs and informing future solutions

Towards the Composition of Services by End-Users: A Mobile-Based Solution

[EN] Nowadays, we live surrounded by heterogeneous and distributed services that are available to people anytime and anywhere. Even though these services can be used individually, it is through their synchronized and combined usage that end-users are provided with added value. However, existing solutions to service composition are not targeted at ordinary end-users. In fact, these solutions require technical knowledge to deal with the technological heterogeneity in which they are offered to the market. To this end, the paper presents a tool-supported platform that is aided by: (1) EUCalipTool, an end-user mobile tool that implements a Domain Specific Visual Language, which has been specifically designed to compose services on mobile devices; (2) a Faceted Service Registry, which plays the role of gateway between service implementations and end-users, hiding technological issues from the latter when including services in a composition; and (3) a Generation Module, which transforms end-user descriptions into BPMN specification that are interpreted by an execution infrastructure developed for that purpose.This work has been developed with the financial support of the Spanish State Research Agency under the project TIN2017-84094-R and co-financed with ERDF.Valderas, P.; Torres Bosch, MV.; Pelechano Ferragud, V. (2020). Towards the Composition of Services by End-Users: A Mobile-Based Solution. 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A mobile-based solution for supporting end-users in the composition of services

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11042-016-3910-4Currently, technologies and applications evolve to create eco-systems made up of a myriad of heterogeneous and distributed services that are accessible anytime and anywhere. Even though these services can be used individually, it is their coordinated and combined usage what provide an added value to end-users. In addition, user¿s wide adoption of mobile devices for daily activities have fostered a shift in the role played by end-users towards Internet data and services. However, existing solutions to service composition are not targeted to ordinary end-users. More easy-to-use tools have to be offered to end-users to make sure that they are successfully accepted and used by them. To this end, the work presented in this paper supports end-users in the creation of service compositions by using mobile devices. We present a Domain Specific Visual Language (DSVL) for end-users that allows them to create service compositions. A tool specifically designed for mobile devices supports this DSVL.This work has been developed with the support of MINECO under the project SMART ADAPT TIN2013-42981-P and co-financed with ERDF.Valderas Aranda, PJ.; Torres Bosch, MV.; Mansanet Benavent, I.; Pelechano Ferragud, V. (2016). A mobile-based solution for supporting end-users in the composition of services. Multimedia Tools and Applications. 1-31. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-016-3910-4S131Athreya B, Bahmani F, Diede A, Scaffidi C (2012) End-user programmers on the loose: a study of programming on the phone for the phone. In IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC), Innsbruck, Austria, pp. 75–82Atoma (2015) Atoomam, a touch of magic. Accesible at: https://www.atooma.com/ . 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My IoT Puzzle: Debugging IF-THEN Rules Through the Jigsaw Metaphor

End users can nowadays define applications in the format of IF-THEN rules to personalize their IoT devices and online services. Along with the possibility to compose such applications, however, comes the need to debug them, e.g., to avoid unpredictable and dangerous behaviors. In this context, different questions are still unexplored: which visual languages are more appropriate for debugging IF-THEN rules? Which information do end users need to understand, identify, and correct errors? To answer these questions, we first conducted a literature analysis by reviewing previous works on end-user debugging, with the aim of extracting design guidelines. Then, we developed My IoT Puzzle, a tool to compose and debug IF-THEN rules based on the Jigsaw metaphor. My IoT Puzzle interactively assists users in the debugging process with different real-time feedback, and it allows the resolution of conflicts by providing textual and graphical explanations. An exploratory study with 6 participants preliminary confirms the effectiveness of our approach, showing that the usage of the Jigsaw metaphor, along with real-time feedback and explanations, helps users understand and fix conflicts among IF-THEN rules

m: Ciudad: enabling end-user mobile service creation

Purpose Mobile computing enables end-users to create small services on their mobiles and share valuable and context-aware information with others. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a platform for end-user generated mobile services – so-called microservices. Design/methodology/approach As a key component the authors present a microservice description language for user-driven mobile service creation and platform-independent service execution and rendering. The paper also gives insight into the authors' visual authoring tool. The chosen design approach is evaluated in two phases: an intermediate evaluation with a small hands-on trial and an online survey; and a final laboratory test with 24 test users in total. Findings The paper provides empirical insights about the methods and motivations of end-users creating small mobile services. The main purposes of service creation would be mostly to exchange information, stay in contact, and just for fun (on the basis of non-commercial use). The evaluations also indicate the visual drag and drop approach of putting service blocks together as being the most favored in terms of user satisfaction. Originality/value The concepts and findings introduced in this paper will help in designing mobile service authoring environments, which is appealing to software communities/vendors and mobile network operators. The presented platform is, to the authors' knowledge, the first designed and implemented infrastructure enabling end-user mobile service creation.</p

Puzzle: A Visual-Based Environment for End User Development in Touch-Based Mobile Phones

Abstract. Despite the widespread usage of mobile devices there is a lack of environments able to allow end users to create applications directly in such devices. In this paper, we present the Puzzle framework, which supports a visual environment for opportunistically creating mobile applications in touchbased mobile phones. The user interface is designed to be usable for mobile users that do not use programming languages in their daily work as well as to motivate end users to playfully experiment and create applications. In particular, we report on its user interface, framework and evaluation

Circuitsmaster:an online end-user development environment for IoT electronics

\u3cp\u3eEven though Arduino has made creating products with electronics more accessible, a significant number of users still have difficulties with it. An online tool CircuitsMaster.com (CM), aiming make the design of electronics with Arduino faster and easier is presented in this paper. Three diverse needs of designers that wish to include electronics with Arduino in their projects are explained. CM uses a combination of end-user development paradigms to answer to these needs. Based on results from a user evaluation, those who used CM were significantly faster in creating typical electronics assignments when compared to subjects who did not use CM. Therefore, such tools seem to have a salient role to play for designers that wish to develop IoT products.\u3c/p\u3