End User Development of Service-based Applications

This paper reports some reflections on the users’ mental models of web services and service composition. This knowledge was elicited from two studies involving individual semi-structured interviews and group discussion. In particular, we focus on what end-users, with no formal programming background, understand about web-services and how they view service composition at the presentation layer. The results showed a high user acceptance towards a simple authoring tool dedicated to building their own service-based applications. However, several difficulties emerged when trying to simplify service orientated programming to make them available to a non-technical audience. Recommendations to resolve them are discussed in the conclusion.