FRADS: A system for facilitating rapid prototyping by end users

Abstract While user interface toolkits and managers facilitate prototyping by programmers, few systems allow nonprogrammers to create their own applications. In this paper, we report some techniques that bring prototyping to nonprogramming domain experts, namely professional test developers at Educational Testing Service. The Free-Response Authoring and Delivery System (FRADS) allows professional test developers to create dynamic, working prototypes of computer-based test questions. FRADS was designed to leverage nonprogrammers' experience with commercial graphics packages. Test developers create questions by importing graphics and other user-interface objects, choosing the tools to provide to students in responding to the question, and delineating—via dialog boxes and specially designed graphical objects—how the tools and provided interface objects interact. With FRADS, we explore how much “programming power” can be obtained by using direct, graphical specification of applications.