Scientia : An end user development environment for decision support systems/

Abstract

This thesis describes an end user programming environment that allows non-programmers to create decision support protocols for use on electronic devices. User centered design techniques were followed to identify the difficulties encountered by users when attempting to create complex protocols, specifically addressing the problems of the scale, complexity, and specificity required for a protocol to be effectively used. The result is a highly usable desktop client graphical user interface which can create protocols that can be exported in portable formats. A summative user study was conducted on the finished software in order to evaluate its success in enabling non-programmers to author protocols.