On the Design of User-Centric Supporting Service Composition Environments

In a user-centric service creation process, users should drive the service creation, in which services can be composed out of existing services. However, the creation is expected to take place also at runtime and possibly be performed by non-technical users. These users require support in the composition process, since they cannot deal with all the technical details of service composition. Furthermore, users have different characteristics and properties. In this paper we propose a classification of users in terms of their application domain and technical knowledge in order to identify different types of users and their requirements in the service composition process. These requirements can be used to design and build suitable supporting composition environments. Although our classification of users may seem trivial at first sight, it is quite essential for identifying users requirements and derive the appropriate supporting environment. Nowadays most of the approaches are technology-driven rather than user-oriented. We argue that only by taking the user into account a truly user-centric service creation and delivery can be achieved.