How to make software softer---designing tailorable applications
Oliver Stiemerling, Helge Kahler, Volker Wulf · 1997
The design of tailorable systems is an important issue for fields of application which are characterized by differentiation and dynamics. We show how tailorability can be combined with approaches of evolutionary and participative software-engineering and discuss some conceptual problems arising from this approach. Moreover, we present two case studies on how to design tailorable functionality in a groupware development project. KEYWORDS Tailorability, groupware, participatory design, design cases INTRODUCTION Tailorability is a property of software which allows to change certain aspects of the software in order to meet different user requirements. It is widely agreed that tailorability is one of the major future challenges in the design of user interfaces and interactive systems ([29], [4], [18], [11], [25], [19], [14], [1]). Several authors have pointed out that with tailorable software one has to take into account several problems which classical design methodologies do not (and ...