Therefore, EUD is only a partial success story. Here, we argue the spread of EUD depends on a fine balance between user motivation, effec- tive tools, and management sup- port. We explore that balance and investigate a future approach to EUD—meta- design—that proposes a vision in which design, learning, and development become part of everyday working practice. Designing language for user- computer communication poses a conflict between complexity and power. More complex lan- guages can address a wider range of problems but impose an COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM September 2004/Vol. 47, No. 9 33 The future success of EUD depends on creating tools that end users are motivated to learn and use in daily work practices. By G. Fischer, E. Giaccardi, Y. Ye, A.G. Sutcliffe, and N. Mehandjiev End-user development (EUD) activities range from customization to component configuration and programming. Office software, such as the ubiquitous spreadsheet, provides customization facilities, while the growth of the Web has added impetus to end-user scripting for interactive func- tions in Web sites. In scientific and engineering domains, end users frequently develop complex sys- tems with standard programming languages such as C++ and Java. However, only a minority of users adapt commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software products. Indeed, composing systems from reusable components, such as enterprise resource planing (ERP) systems, defeats most end users who resort to expensive and scarce expert developers for imple- mentation. META-DESIGN: A MANIFESTO FOR END-USER DEVELOPMENT