In
the Information Society, end-users keep increasing very fast in
number, as well as in their demand with respect to the activities
they would like to perform with computer environments, without
being obliged to become computer specialists. There is a strong
request of providing end-users with powerful and flexible environments,
tailorable to the culture, skills and needs of very diverse end-user
population. In this paper, we discuss a framework for End-User
Development (EUD) and present our methodology to design software
environments that support the activities of a particular class
of end-users, called domain-expert users, with the objective of
easing the way these users work with computers. Such environments
are called Software Shaping Workshops in analogy to artisan workshops,
since they provide users with the tools, organized on a bench,
that are necessary to accomplish their specific activities by
properly shaping software artifacts. The methodology is discussed,
outlining its implementation through a web-based prototype.
