WWW/Internet - Portal do Software Público Brasileiro

ISBN: 978-972-8939-25-0 © 2010 IADISFROM THE PROBLEM SPACE TO THE WEB SPACE:A MODEL FOR DESIGNING LOCALIZED WEB SYSTEMSClaudia Iacob and Li ZhuDipartimento di Informatica e Comunicazione, Università degli Studi di MilanoVia Comelico 39, 20139 Milano (Italy)ABSTRACTWeb systems provide solutions for real world problems from various domains. Defining a problem space andmaterializing its solution within a web space brings a set of challenges that come from both the diversity of end usersfacing the problem and the diversity of technologies available today. This paper addresses the design of Web systemsseen as web spaces which provide their end users with tools tailored to their domain, their role in the domain, theirculture and the platform they are using. These tools help end users develop their exploration of the problem at handwithout being lost in the space. We propose an abstraction model able to support the design of localized web systems andwhich preserves software quality measures like maintainability, reuse and consistency. The method for applying thismodel together with a concrete example of its application is presented.KEYWORDSAbstraction, languages, software design, Web.1. INTRODUCTIONIn the Web 2.0, there is an increasing need of allowing end users – i.e. people who are not computer scienceexperts, but are supported by software systems in performing their everyday work activities (Brancheau,1993) – to access applications and information in a seamless way, using different platforms (Lin, 2008) oracting different roles (Carrara, 2002). Many of these end users often develop creative activities, such asdesign (Xu, 2009), medical diagnosis (Costabile, 2007) or artistic creation (Treadaway, 2009). The goals ofthese activities are not sharply defined at the beginning of each activity, but emerge progressively by theexploration of the problem space. The end users develop their creative processes as unfolding processes, inwhich their problem space is progressively “differentiated to create a complex solution” (Borchers, 2001).End users therefore need to access a web space, which is a “space of opportunities” (Alexander, 1977) wherethey find tools which allow them to develop their exploration without being lost in this space and convergingto their final results. In their activities, end users of different cultures and working in different domains oftenface a common problem and collaborate to reach its solutions. They need to work in teams, share tools aswell as knowledge and wisdom about the problem’s solutions; moreover, they need to access all resourcesaccording to different styles of interaction, which respect different cultural conventions. Hence, they usedifferent communication and reasoning tools in their collaboration, giving rise to a set of issues anddifficulties to be faced.Based on the study of previously designed web systems addressing various problem domains – such asmedicine (Costabile 2006), engineering (Valtolina, 2009), geology (Carrara, 2000) - we argue that end usersneed to be supported in their daily work activities by being allowed to interact with tools tailored to theirdomain, role, culture and platform in use. These tools must reflect the problem domain and need to bematerialized and managed in the Web. Moreover, as experts in their own domains, end users should besupported to freely express their knowledge of the domain and intentions by using the tools they areaccustomed with. Therefore, we aim to design web interactive systems (WIS) which support end users’ intheir work by: i). allowing them to reason in their own system of signs and to exploit their skills andknowledge, ii). mitigating - on the side of the users - the process of changing the flow of reasoning from oneproblem domain to another and iii). allowing the materialization of a WIS on diverse digital platforms.112