Paper Reading #24 - Mobia Modeler: easing the creation process of mobile applications for non-technical users

Reference:

Florence Balagtas-Fernandez, Max Tafelmayer, and Heinrich Hussmann.

IUI '10 Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces

Summary:

This paper is about a tool that would make it easy for people without programming skills to build mobile applications.  While there are mobile companies that are opening their APIs and tools, those without programming skills are unable to create something.  The authors present a tool to help this. They use the creating of an application in the area of mobile health monitoring as a proof of concept.

Discussion:

I think two things about this paper.  First, as a programmer, I think that it is horrible.  being able to program is an acquired skill, and why should people be allowed to take short cuts.  It is like developing something that could play the piano just by telling it what to do.  It takes the technical ability away from doing something.  Secondly however, I think that it could be interesting to see what people with no programming skills can do with a tool like this.