Going back and forth in metacommunication threads

This paper presents an exploratory study about how savvy end users configure return points in mediated interactions with Web applications through WNH (Web Navigation Helper), a user agent that supports rephrasing, explanation, commentary and elaboration of interaction in scripted Web activities. The study is part of a long-term research on selfexpression through software programming. Savvy users creating mediation dialogs for the benefit of other users (third parties) are actually engaged in a human-computer interaction (HCI) design process involved in end user development (EUD). The study shows that decisions about when, where, how and why to go back to previous points in the design of mediated conversation with WNH are very complex, even for savvy users. More importantly, we collected powerful evidence of the participants' interpretation of what interaction through WNH is all about. We believe that such evidence stands for their intuitions about HCI in a broader sense. The main contribution of the study is thus to illuminate aspects of EUD and HCI that haven’t been discussed to-date and to propose questions for new kinds of investigation. Author