2010-03-31: Navid Ahmadi

Title: Supporting Web Communities to Build Interactive Artifacts

Abstract: Web 2.0 has turned the Web of documents into a collaborative environment where users develop and share their images, movies, etc., through blogs, wikis, tags, and recommendations. Yet the types of artifacts the users can develop and share is restricted to static hypertext based documents such as images and movies. In this talk I explore the challenges of developing interactive applications, e.g., games and scientific simulations, as a Web based activity. Respective to the challenges, I devise a conceptual framework, based on meta-design, to enable Web communities to build their own domain-oriented development environments on the Web. I will demonstrate the prototypes that I have developed to support this conceptual framework. The prototypes include (i) Ristretto Mobile, a Web-based compiler that compiles AgentSheets applications into native JavaScript application, and (ii) AgentWeb, a Web-based infrastructure for rapid development of domain-oriented development environments. Finally, I will demonstrate some of our domain studies and future work in the domains of Games, Simulations, and Smart Devices.

Short Bio: Navid Ahmadi has been a Ph.D. student since November 2006 in the faculty of Informatics, at University of Lugano, Switzerland. He is interested in enabling collaborative and social end-user programming on the Web. His research relies upon Web 2.0, Domain-specific languages, CSCW, and end-user programming. He is also interested in Visual Interfaces, Ubiquitous and Pervasive Computing, Semantic Web, and Service-Oriented Computing. He has initiated WEUP (End-User Programming on the Web), an open-source project to develop an infrastructure for enabling end users to build their own interactive applications on the Web.

Presentation Slides