Using Specifications to Build Domain-Independent Collaborative Design Environments

Nowadays, Collaborative Technologies is an area of growing interest with a great number of developments being carried out. However, most of them deal with specific applications, and building a complete collaborative environment implies a great effort. We have experienced this in the development of DomoSim-TPC, a collaborative environment for the learning of domotical design. To overcome these limitations and difficulties, we outline the application of specification techniques to describe some characteristic elements of CSCW/CSCL systems, such as the approached domain, the problems to solve or the communication mechanisms. Thus, in this paper we first analyze the domain-dependent DomoSim-TPC system to generalize its positions in order to obtain a specification which models a domain of design and the textual communication forms between the users. Then, we present a domain-independent tool that processes this specification to dynamically generate a collaborative system allowing the approach of the specified design domain.

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