Spatial Hypertext for End-User Development Tools

Abstract

Software applications become more and more dominant in our daily life and work. However, it is very difficult to provide sophisticated tools for all arising use cases. End-User Development (EUD) is a term that describes the development of applications by end users rather than professional developers. This enables them creating highly specialized solutions. End users are laypersons when it comes to building software, therefore they need appropriate tools for managing the whole development process. This includes designing, implementing and deploying applications. While there are already various tools available, we focus on a recommendation feature for graphical EUD tools, utilizing their spatial hypertext capabilities. In this paper we provide an overview of some common issues such tools are often struggling with. We explain how visually analyzing the workspace, parsing an implicit spatial hypertext and eventually presenting recommendations may tackle them. We further describe the project HEIMDALL in detail, especially the way of generating recommendations for software modules with the aim to raise users' awareness. Furthermore, we discuss the use of such a system that reaches a similar understanding of relationships between software modules as users have. Finally, we point to open issues that still need to be addressed to improve results and their presentation.