@phdthesis {phd:2014:saeed.aghaee,
	title = {End-User Development of Mashups Using Live Natural Language Programming},
	volume = {PhD},
	year = {2014},
	month = {February},
	school = {University of Lugano},
	type = {PhD},
	address = {Lugano, Switzerland},
	abstract = {The emergence of the long-tail in the market of software applications is shifting the role of end-users from mere consumers to becoming developers of applications addressing their unique, personal, and transient needs. On the Web, a popular form of such applications is called mashup, built out of the lightweight composition of Web APIs (reusable software components delivered as a service through the Web). To enable end-users to build mashups, there is a key problem that must be overcome: End-users lack programming knowledge as well as the interest to learn how to master the complex set of Web technologies required to develop mashups. End-User Development (EUD) is an emerging research field dealing with this type of problems. Its main goal is to design tools and techniques facilitating the development of software applications by non-programmers.

In this dissertation, we designed and implemented NaturalMash, an EUD system that empowers end-users to develop mashups. NaturalMash adopts a novel hybrid end-user programming technique combining natural language programming with a what-you-see-is-what-you-get interface in a live programming environment. We followed an iterative user-centered design process, in which three formative evaluations drove the incremental design of our system. At the end of the process, we conducted a summative usability evaluation, whose results suggest that the system is highly usable by non-programmers. Also, we proposed a novel benchmarking framework to evaluate mashup tools against each other. Using the framework, we conducted a comparative evaluation of 28 state-of-the-art mashup tools (NaturalMash included) against their expressive power. According to the results, our proposed system has a moderate yet competitive level of expressiveness. All in all, NaturalMash contributes a novel design featuring a unique combination of end-user programming techniques, a suitable metaphor, and the ability to enable an optimal learning experience. Our extensive evaluation results indicate that NaturalMash is located at a sweet spot along the classical trade-off between expressiveness and usability/learnability.
},
	keywords = {end-user software engineering, live programming, natural language programming, NaturalMash, Web mashups},
	url = {http://doc.rero.ch/record/210369/files/2014INFO002.pdf},
	author = {Saeed Aghaee}
}
@conference {aghaee2013iseud,
	title = {Guidelines for Efficient and Effective End-User Development of Mashups},
	booktitle = {Fourth International Symposium on End-User Development (IS-EUD 2013)},
	year = {2013},
	month = {June},
	pages = {260-265},
	address = {Copenhagen, Denmark},
	abstract = {End-User Development (EUD) is an emerging research area aiming at empowering non-technical users to somehow create or design software artifacts. Mashups provide a high potential for EUD activities on the Web. Users on the Web can tap into a vast resource of off-the-shelf components in order to rapidly compose new lightweight software applications called mashups. In this paper, we provide a set of guidelines to design EUD systems for mashups that are widely referred to as mashup tools. The guidelines are derived from our experience with the (ongoing) design and evaluation of NaturalMash, a novel mashup tool targeted for a wide range of users to create feature-rich mashups.},
	keywords = {end-user software engineering, NaturalMash, Web mashups},
	doi = {10.1007/978-3-642-38706-7_23},
	author = {Saeed Aghaee and Cesare Pautasso}
}
@conference {naturalmash:vlhcc:2013,
	title = {Natural End-User Development of Web Mashups},
	booktitle = {IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC 2013)},
	year = {2013},
	month = {September},
	pages = {111 - 118 },
	publisher = {IEEE},
	organization = {IEEE},
	address = {San Jose, CA, USA},
	abstract = {End-User Development (EUD) can be exploited on the Web, where users have the opportunity to create niche {\textquotedblleft}Web Mashup{\textquotedblright} applications as a means to address their long tail of situational needs in different domains of application. In this paper, we describe the design and evaluation of NaturalMash, an innovative EUD system for mashups. NaturalMash provides a high level of expressive power while it is still usable by non-professional users. This clearly distinguishes NaturalMash from existing mashup EUD tools that are either too limited or highly specialized for inexperienced users. The NaturalMash user interface efficiently combines different techniques such as live programming, natural language programming, What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG), and Programming by Demonstration (PbD). The design of NaturalMash adopts a formative evaluation approach, and has completed two design and evaluation iterations. The paper reports the results of the last formative evaluation and discusses the implications of the findings. The results are promising and suggest that the proposed system has a short and gentle learning curve and enables even non-professional users to rapidly build useful mashups.},
	keywords = {end-user software engineering, natural language processing, NaturalMash, service composition, Web mashups},
	doi = {10.1109/VLHCC.2013.6645253},
	author = {Saeed Aghaee and Cesare Pautasso and Antonella De Angeli}
}
@article {DBLP:conf/icwe/AghaeeP11a,
	title = {End-User Programming for Web Mashups - Open Research Challenges},
	volume = {7059},
	year = {2011},
	month = {June},
	pages = {347-351},
	publisher = {Springer},
	address = {Paphos, Cyprus},
	abstract = {Mashup is defined as the practice of lightweight composition, serendipitous reuse, and user-centric development on the Web. In spite of the fact that the development of mashups is rather simple due to the reuse of all the required layers of a Web application (functionality, data, and user interface), it still requires programming experience. This is a significant hurdle for non-programmers (end-users with minimal or no programming experience), who constitute the majority of Web users. To cope with this, an End-User Programming (EUP) tool can be designed to reduce the barriers of mashup development, in a way that even non-programmers will be able to create innovative, feature-rich mashups. In this paper, we give an overview of the existing EUP approaches for mashup development, as well as a list of open research challenges.},
	keywords = {end-user software engineering, Web mashups},
	doi = {10.1007/978-3-642-27997-3_38},
	author = {Saeed Aghaee and Cesare Pautasso}
}
