Iterative design and evaluation of a DSL for end-user programming in an industrial domain

• Michael Moser
• Michael Pfeiffer
• Josef Pichler
• Christian Salomon
• Mario Winterer

Domain-specific languages (DSL) significantly increase programmer’s productivity. In the field of end-user programming not necessarily productivity gains, but understandability and learnability of a DSL are crucial for the successful adoption of the language. But as DSL developers are usually unable to assess the programming skills of end-users, the DSLs they intuitively design often lack these characteristics. Hence, the languages are unusable for end-users. To hurdle this problem we applied the HCI interaction design process during the development of a visual DSL for end-user programming in the welding automation domain. Strong end-user participation and iterative usability evaluations are at the heart of our approach. This work reports on the overall approach, conducted usability evaluations, and the thereby triggered evolution of the language. Our main findings are that active participation of users in the design process is crucial for the acceptance of DSLs for end-user programming in the industrial domain.