Domain-Expert Users and their Needs of Software Development

International audienceThere are several categories of end-users of computer systems, depending on their culture, skills, and types of tasks they perform. This paper recognizes the problem of 'user diversity' even among people of the same technical or scientific tradition, and focuses on the study of a specific category of end-users, that we call domain-expert users: they are professionals in some domain different from computer science, who need to use computers in their daily work. We analyse the activities they usually perform or are willing to perform with computers and we identify their real needs of carrying out activities that result in the creation or modification of software artefacts