End-User programming of mobile services : Empowering domain experts to implement mobile data collection applications

Abstract

The widespread use of smart mobile devices (e.g., in clinical trials or online surveys) offers promising perspectives with respect to the controlled collection of high-quality data. The design, implementation and deployment of such mobile data collection applications, however, is challenging in several respects. First, various mobile operating systems need to be supported, taking the short release cycles of vendors into account as well. Second, domain-specific requirements need to be flexibly aligned with mobile application development. Third, usability styleguides need to be obeyed. Altogether, this turns both programming and maintaining mobile applications into a costly, time-consuming, and error-prone endeavor. To remedy these drawbacks, a model-driven framework empowering domain experts to implement robust mobile data collection applications in an intuitive way was realized. The design of this end-user programming framework is based on experiences gathered in real-life mobile data collection projects. Facets of various stakeholders involved in such projects are discussed and an overall architecture as well as its components are presented. In particular, it is shown how the framework enables domain experts (i.e., end users) to flexibly implement mobile data collection applications on their own. Overall, the framework allows for the effective support of mobile services in a multitude of application domains.