Technical papers

Wednesday 10th September

Session 1: Program Comprehension

• Khaironi Y. Sharif and Jim Buckley Observing Open Source Programmers’ Information Seeking
• Bennett Kankuzi and Yirsaw Ayalew An MCL Algorithm Based Technique for Comprehending Spreadsheets
• Christopher Douce The Stores Model of Code Cognition

Session 2: Core Beliefs

• Alan F. Blackwell, Luke Church and Thomas Green The Abstract is an Enemy: Alternative Perspectives to Computational Thinking
• Judith Segal Scientists and Software Engineers: A Tale of Two Cultures
• Chris Exton Thinking about Thinking in Objects: Methods, Findings and Implications from a Psychological Perspective

Thursday 11th September

Session 3: Pair Programming

• Stephan Salinger and Lutz Prechelt What Happens During Pair Programming?
• Laura Plonka A Comparison Between Student and Professional Pair Programmers

Session 4: Software Development

• Luke Church and Alan F. Blackwell Structured Text Modification Using Guided Inference
• Meurig Beynon, Russell Boyatt and Zhan En Chan Intuition in Software Development Revisited
• Zahid Hussain, Martin Lechner, Harald Milchrahm, Sara Shahzad, Wolfgang Slany, Martin Umgeher, and Peter Wolkerstorfer Integrating Extreme Programming and User-Centered Design
• Martin Lechner XP Team Psychology: An Inside View

Session 5: Factors Affecting Coding

• David Greathead MBTI Personality Type and Student Code Comprehension Skill
• Adrian Creegan and Chris Exton A Longitudinal Study of Depth of Inheritance and its Effects on Programmer Maintenance Effort
• Iftikhar Ahmed Khan, Willem-Paul Brinkman, Robert M. Hierons Towards a Computer Interaction-Based Mood Measure Instrument

Friday 12th September

Session 6: Teaching Programming

• Walter Milner A Loop is a Compression
• Jussi Kasurinen, Mika Purmonen and Uolevi Nikula A Study of Visualization in Introductory Programming

Session 7: The Meta Session

• David Budgen, Mark Turner, Pearl Brereton and Barbara Kitchenham Using Mapping Studies in Software Engineering
• Mark Turner, Rumjit Kaur and Pearl Brereton A Lightweight Systematic Literature Review of Studies about the Use of Pair Programming to Teach Introductory Programming
• Glauco de F. Carneiro, Manoel Mendonca The Importance of Cognitive and Usability Elements in Designing Software Visualization Tools

Alan Dix – Keynote

As We May Code – The art (and craft) of computer programming in the 21st century

It is now 50 years since Knuth published the first volume of “The art of computer programming”.  This and the succeeding volumes (still being produced) form the definitive and monumental achievement in traditional algorithmics.  However, the practice of programming has changed dramatically in recent years.  Some changes are obvious: the use of technology in coding – from coding forms and punch cards to IDEs; the languages for coding – from Fortran and assembler to JavaScript and bytecode; and even the paradigms of coding – from procedures to objects.  However, there are also more subtle, and possibly more fundamental changes that transform the way coders now think about their code and the very act of coding and hence affect centrally the understanding of the psychology of programming.  In this talk I will try to draw out some of these changes writing from experience as a HCI ‘expert’, as a teacher and, perhaps most importantly, as a coder.

Adrian Mackenzie – Abstract

‘We want to do for biology what Intel does for electronics’: re-factoring biology as a software engineering enterprise.

Adrian Mackenzie

CESAGen – Centre for Social and Economic Aspects of Genomics
Lancaster University, LA1 4YD, UK

The paper describes certain trends in the field of synthetic biology or ’synbio’ from the perspective of software engineering practices. The nascent field of synbio is relying heavily on software engineering approaches such as modularity, platforms, registries, libraries, standards and re-factoring to develop technologies such as biofuels, drugs, assays, biosensors and crops. The idea is that shared codifications of techniques and processes of biological engineering will lead to an accelerating rate of invention in biology. As well as invoking software engineering as a design philosophy to be ‘ported’ into biology, the everyday practices of synbio are saturated by web software cultures of collaboration and participation (wikis, blogs) as well as relying on web-based technical services (such as DNA synthesis, sequences database and searching tools). One analytical question for sociologies of synbio would be: does the model of software engineering and design abstraction begins to break down in synbio? Based on a small case study of two different synbio projects, this paper will sketch a preliminary answer to that question.

Tutorial – Cognitive Dimensions

It’s easy to look at a piece of technology and say it’s got lots of features. Deciding whether it will be usable is harder. We could get a bunch of volunteers and try it – but think of the problems: getting the volunteers is hard enough, but even when you’ve done that, all you’ll find out will be the worst problems. Even worse, you’ll have to actually build the technology before you can test it.

So people have developed a number of predictive approaches. They vary greatly but they all try to predict whether technology will be usable, preferably without needing real volunteers and if possible without needing to build the real technology.

Some approaches focus on one type of technology. That’s not enough; we need an approach that works for all types of technology, including non-interactive systems (notations) as well as the more high-profile interactive systems.

You’re still not out of the wood. So you discover that your technology is problematic. Is it problematic in the same way as some other piece of technology? Will the same solution be relevant to both of them? We need a standardised vocabulary, a few words describing familiar good/bad points.

OK, nearly out of the wood, the trees are thinning out, but we’re still not quite there …. When you’ve got a vocabulary, what of it? Will a potential usability problem be relevant to the particular use you envisage? We need a standardised, high-level account of what technology can be used for, and we need to relate our vocabulary of good/bad points to the potential uses.

The Cognitive Dimensions framework does that, and is still unique in doing so, we believe.

The CDs framework provides
•    a standardised framework of ‘cognitive dimensions’, each relating to usability experience,
•    where each dimension is (more or less) independent of each of the others,
•    applying to every kind of information artefact (i.e. anything used for storing or manipulating or accessing information – that’s most non-natural things);
•    a background in the experimental literature of cognitive psychology relating to each of the dimensions;
•    a high-level classification of the activities people get up to with technology;
•    and an attempt to say, for each activity, which cognitive dimensions are critical to making that activity successful.

The last point is crucial. No feature is good or bad in itself. Until you know what it’s to be used for, you can’t say whether a device is usably designed or not.

One other point. The dimensions are not brand new discoveries. On the contrary, they will all sound very familiar from your own experience – but you probably haven’t named them before, let alone built them into a system. (If you have, let’s hear about it, please!)

Instructors:
Luke Church (Cambridge University)

Thomas Green (University of Leeds)

Adrian Mackenzie’s Keynote

The provisional title for Adrian’s talk is:

‘We want to do for biology what Intel does for electronics’: re-factoring biology as a software engineering enterprise.

Conference dinner

The conference dinner on the Thursday night will feature some traditional dishes from the North West of England such as Lancashire Hotpot and Cumberland Sausage.  The dinner will be in a private room at The Borough, a popular gastro-pub in central Lancaster.  Tickets for the conference dinner cost 20 pounds and can be paid for in advance when you register.  Tickets should still be available at the conference, but it is possible they will sell out.

Tutorial – Fieldwork for Design

Instructors: Dave Randall (Manchester Metropolitan University), John Rooksby (University of St Andrews) & Mark Rouncefield (Lancaster University)

Goals and Content: The tutorial has the objective of developing an appreciation of the various and practical issues that arise during the conduct of ‘naturalistic’ enquiry – ‘fieldwork’. Competing perspectives will be examined, compared and contrasted. The tutorial will assess competing claims concerning the relevance of the ‘social setting’ in which work takes place and the consequences for system development. We argue that the study of socially organised cooperation is central to new generations of systems in both organisational and domestic contexts.

· Participants will learn the relevance of theoretical perspectives to the practice of fieldwork, and to the problem of capturing social complexity.

· The practical problems, strategies and choices of the fieldworker in performing observational studies will be discussed.

· Experiences gleaned from a range of studies in commercial and industrial settings, domestic environments and public spaces – will be examined. For this tutorial there will be a particular emphasis on studies of systems developers.

· Problems of method, communication and comprehension in collaborations between ethnographer and system developer will be presented.

· There will be online access to comprehensive notes and an annotated bibliography. It will review and build on existing literature on ethnography, systems design, and change management but will endeavour to maintain a practical focus.

Intended Learning Outcomes: Fieldwork must be adequate to interdisciplinary tasks. To ensure this, our emphasis is on the sharing of expertise and on training – these are skills that can be learned. There is an emerging ‘body politic’, a set of tools and assumptions that are beginning to be used to evaluate and comment on matters of empirical adequacy, scope, relevance, tractability and so on. These tools can be acquired through training and the sharing of experience and expertise. It entails a hybrid of skills and tools from the ‘ethnographic’ and the ‘fieldwork’ tradition; it involves the use of a wide set of conceptual tools and concerns; and it requires a dynamic and flexible approach to its role in a design process. And finally, it requires a particular view about evidence, its evaluation and its use, and about the role of evidence generated by other disciplinary-specific approaches to fieldwork.

Intended audience: The tutorial will be of use to those who are intending to embark on observational studies themselves, and to system developers who wish to become familiar with issues arising from the adoption of observational methods.

About the instructors:

Dave Randall, is a Senior Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University.  He has been involved in a range of projects including; Air Traffic Control; retail finance; museums and domestic environments.  He is a co-author of the book Fieldwork for Design.

John Rooksby, is a Research Fellow at the University of St Andrews.  He has conducted fieldwork investigations of healthcare and systems development.

Mark Rouncefield, is a Microsoft European Research Fellow and a Senior Research Fellow at Lancaster University has conducted fieldwork investigations of financial services; managerial work; healthcare and domestic environments.  He is a co-author of the book Fieldwork for Design.