WOAD: A Framework to Enable the End-User Development of Coordination-Oriented Functionalities

In this article, we present WOAD, a framework that was inspired and partly validated within a 2-year observational case study at a major teaching hospital. We present the WOAD framework by stating its main and motivating rationales, outlining its high-level architecture and then introducing its denotational language, LWOAD. We propose LWOAD to support users of an electronic document system in declaratively expressing, specifying and implementing content-and event-based mechanisms that fulfill coordinative requirements and make users aware of relevant conditions. Our focus addresses a the user-friendly and yet formal expression of local coordinative practices based on the work context; b the promotion of awareness of both these conventions and the context to enable actors to quickly respond; c the full deployment of coordination-oriented and context-aware functionalities into legacy electronic document systems. We give examples of LWOAD mechanisms taken from the case study and discuss their impact from the EUD perspective.

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