We are now entering a new phase for software development where millions of people are not only using software but also becoming involved in its development to widely varying degrees. Existing software design methodologies that focus primarily on productivity-driven systems are insufficient to cope with the emergence of situated uses and fluctuating requirements encountered by such wide and diversified user involvement. Rather, a new class of participative software systems is needed, the design of which does not end at the time of deployment. For participative systems success hinges on continued user participation, and an important goal is to achieve the "best fit" between the software system and its ever-changing context of use, problems, domains, users, and communities of users. In this project, the PI will develop a meta-design framework to address fundamental challenges and guide software developers in the design of such systems. Grounded in an assessment of existing design theories as well as the systematic analysis of successful participative software systems, this research will start with a partially articulated meta-design framework, founded on the assumption that meta-designed systems can be supported by the Seeding, Evolutionary Growth, and Reseeding (SER) process model. The PI will identify and correlate the technical and social characteristics of participative software systems that support users to collaboratively engage in the design of solutions to their own problems. The identified characteristics will be used to guide future development of the Envisionment and Discovery Collaboratory (EDC), which will be used by real users to solve complex real-world problems in different design domains. The work will be integrated with a specific major, multi-year urban planning project relating to public transportation, for which an initial collaboration among the stakeholders has already been formed. Careful and systematic assessment of design decision impacts, guided by the initial meta-design framework, on this real-world problem-solving situation will feed back into the refinement of the meta-design framework. The resulting meta-design framework will delineate a design space, define a design process, and identify a set of evaluation criteria for the creation of participative software systems.
Broader Impacts: As software systems are being increasingly woven into our daily lives and reshape the way people interact, collaborate, work, and think, requirements for software systems have become more individually differentiated and continuously change during their ongoing use. This research will create the scientific foundation for the design of participative software systems that do not have fixed requirements at any point in time, and necessitate user participation and contribution as a fundamental part of the system. The research will contribute to a better understanding of the complicated interactions of technical and social aspects essential to this challenging domain of a science of design. The project will bring together researchers from design theory, software engineering, human-computer interaction, and cognitive science to gain insight into how to put owners of problems in charge and make them independent of "high-tech scribes." The many undergraduate and graduate students who will be involved in the research activities will as part of their experience be exposed to new approaches to software design.
