This one-day workshop edition addresses the theme "Differentiating and Deepening the Concept of End User in the Digital Age"
Recent developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and meta-design challenge the understanding of the concept of “end user”. The 8th edition of this workshop aims to critically differentiate, dissect, and deepen the roles, experiences, and demands of end users by inviting contributions from different perspectives. The workshop invites contributions to explore the following fundamental issues:
- Re-conceptualizing the multi-faceted roles that end users can play.
- Investigating how end users are evolving into active participants in the design and development through frameworks (such as meta-design) that encourage creation, modification, and evolution in individual and group activities.
- Understanding the skills and literacies (e.g., computational fluency) that end users need to acquire to be successful contributors (e.g., education, after-school clubs, etc.).
- Envisioning future scenarios and possibilities for end user roles and experiences in the context of emerging technologies and cultural changes.
- Understanding the design trade-offs associated with balancing the potential value of end-user contributions with the necessary effort to ensure that end users will be motivated to contribute over long periods of time.
Topics of discussion may include (but will not be limited to):
- Analysis of the use and historical development of the concept of end user
- Can meta-design frameworks facilitate and empower end users in becoming designers, shaping and adapting systems to their needs?
- What are the major responsibilities for end users in "end-user development” and/versus "end-user software engineering"?
- If computational fluency is widely achieved by humans in the digital age — how will this change the concept of "end user" and “learning with digital tools”?
- How can the division between professional developers and end users be designed and supported as collaborative interactions rather than a rigid separation?
- How do we scale up user participation from individuals to groups to communities?
- In which contexts are end users the drivers of the innovation?
- Which other frameworks and environments in AI exist in addition to Large Language Models (LLMs) for supporting end users?
- How does the role of end users change in the era of LLMs?
- Which additional learning demands occur that empower end users to assess LLM possibilities and limits?
- Success stories and failures (e.g., empirical studies) involving or analyzing end users as active participants in sociotechnical systems in different domains (education, workplace, at home, leisure, etc.).