Using EUREQA for End-User UML Model Development through Design Patterns

This work presents the EUREQA approach for end-user development. The purpose of the tool is to narrow the cognitive gap between the end-user developer's mental model and the software model. The tool uses design patterns as building blocks allowing end-users to create UML class diagram models that capture their domain knowledge. The EUREQA tool hides from view the complexity of code thereby reducing the cognitive load on end-user developers. EUREQA makes non-functional quality issues a first-class concern allowing end-user developers to consider both functional and non-functional aspects of design alternatives. The tool uses visualization techniques to aid in nonfunctional quality assesment. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate and assess the opportunities and challenges of EUREQA. A qualitative, pilot evaluation of EUREQA shows that the visualization techniques work well, whereas there are issues with the abstraction gap between the visualization and class diagram.