Valentina G | Microsoft - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Valentina G

End-user programmers" code is notoriously buggy. This problem is amplified by the increasing comp... more End-user programmers" code is notoriously buggy. This problem is amplified by the increasing complexity of end users" programs. To help end users catch errors early and reliably, we employ a novel approach for the design of enduser debugging tools: a focus on supporting end users" effective debugging strategies. This paper has two core contributions. We first demonstrate the potential of a strategy-centric approach to tool design by presenting StratCel, a strategy-based tool for Excel. Second, we show the benefits of this design approach: participants using StratCel found twice as many bugs as participants using standard Excel, they fixed four times as many bugs, and all this in only a small fraction of the time. Furthermore, this strategy-based approach helped the participants who needed it the most: boosting novices" debugging performance near experienced participants" improved levels. Finally, we reveal several opportunities for future research about strategy-based debugging tools.

We are investigating gender HCI issues in problemsolving software, using quantitative and qualita... more We are investigating gender HCI issues in problemsolving software, using quantitative and qualitative empirical methods. Our research approach uses formative work to understand the existence and attributes of gender-relevant design features, based on which we then design and implement new features in our research prototype. Finally, we perform summative empirical work to evaluate effectiveness.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2009

... spreadsheet users [32]. There are several reasons to ask whether strategies used by scripters... more ... spreadsheet users [32]. There are several reasons to ask whether strategies used by scripters working with a scripting environment might be different from strategies used by end-user pro-grammers with a spreadsheet system. First, the ...

Proceedings of the 28th international conference on Human factors in computing systems - CHI '10, 2010

Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC'06), 2006

The problem of dependability in end-user programming is an emerging area of interest. Pair collab... more The problem of dependability in end-user programming is an emerging area of interest. Pair collaboration in end-user software development may offer a way for end users to debug their programs more effectively. While pair programming studies-primarily of computer science students and professionalsreport positive outcomes in terms of overall program quality, little is known about specific activities that pairs engage in that lead to those outcomes, or of how the previous results may pertain to end-user programmers. In this study we analyze protocols of end-user pairs debugging spreadsheets. The results suggest that end-user pairs can achieve rich reasoning, effective planning, and systematic evaluation. Furthermore, end-user pairs provide specific types of mutual support that facilitate the accomplishment of their goals.

Proceedings of the 2010 ACM-IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement - ESEM '10, 2010

Although there has been significant research into gender regarding educational and workplace prac... more Although there has been significant research into gender regarding educational and workplace practices, there has been little investigation of gender differences pertaining to problem solving with programming tools and environments. As a result, there is little evidence as to what role gender plays in programming tools-and what little evidence there is has involved mainly novice and end-user programmers in academic studies. This paper therefore investigates how widespread such phenomena are in industrial programming situations, considering three disparate programming populations involving almost 3000 people and three different programming platforms in industry. To accomplish this, we analyzed four industry "legacy" studies from a gender perspective, triangulating results against each other and against a new fifth study, also in industry. We investigated gender differences in software feature usage and in tinkering/exploring software features. Furthermore, we examined how such differences tied to confidence. Our results showed interesting, significant gender differences in all three factors-across all populations and platforms.

Proceedings of the 28th international conference on Human factors in computing systems - CHI '10, 2010

Programming has recently become more common among ordinary end users of computer systems. We beli... more Programming has recently become more common among ordinary end users of computer systems. We believe that these end-user programmers are not just coders but also designers, in that they interlace making design decisions with coding rather than treating them as two separate phases. To better understand and provide support for the programming and design needs of end users, we propose a design theory-based approach to look at end-user programming. Toward this end, we conducted a think-aloud study with ten end users creating a web mashup. By analyzing users' verbal and behavioral data using Schön's reflectionin-action design model and the notion of ideations from creativity literature, we discovered insights into end-user programmers' problem-solving attempts, successes, and obstacles, with accompanying implications for the design of end-user programming environments for mashups. The contribution of our work is three-fold: 1) the methodology of using a design lens to view programming, 2) evidence, through insights gained, of the usefulness of this approach, and 3) the implications themselves.

Proceeding of the twenty-sixth annual CHI conference on Human factors in computing systems - CHI '08, 2008

Little is known about the strategies end-user programmers use in debugging their programs, and ev... more Little is known about the strategies end-user programmers use in debugging their programs, and even less is known about gender differences that may exist in these strategies. Without this type of information, designers of end-user programming systems cannot know the -target‖ at which to aim, if they are to support male and female end-user programmers. We present a study investigating this issue. We asked end-user programmers to debug spreadsheets and to describe their debugging strategies. Using mixed methods, we analyzed their strategies and looked for relationships among participants' strategy choices, gender, and debugging success. Our results indicate that males and females debug in quite different ways, that opportunities for improving support for end-user debugging strategies for both genders are abundant, and that tools currently available to end-user debuggers may be especially deficient in supporting debugging strategies used by females.

Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC'06), 2006

We have been working to uncover gender differences in the ways males and females problem solve in... more We have been working to uncover gender differences in the ways males and females problem solve in end-user programming situations, and have discovered differences in males' versus females' use of several debugging features. Still, because this line of investigation is new, knowing exactly what to look for is difficult and important information could escape our notice. We therefore decided to bring data mining techniques to bear on our data, with two aims: primarily, to expand what is known about how males versus females make use of end-user debugging features, and secondarily, to find out whether data mining could bring new understanding to this research, given that we had already studied the data manually using qualitative and quantitative methods. The results suggested several new hypotheses in how males versus females go about end-user debugging tasks, the factors that play into their choices, and how their choices are associated with success.

2009 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC), 2009

Designers' extensive software needs have not been adequately documented in the research literatur... more Designers' extensive software needs have not been adequately documented in the research literature, and are poorly supported by software. Without appropriate tools to support their needs, designers have difficulty knowing the best way to evolve the look and feel of interactive applications they are designing.

Proceedings of the 4th international workshop on End-user software engineering - WEUSE '08, 2008

ABSTRACT In this paper, we describe research that reports gender differences in usage of software... more ABSTRACT In this paper, we describe research that reports gender differences in usage of software engineering tools by end-user programmers. We connect these findings with possible explanations based on theories from other disciplines, and then add to that our recent results that these ...

Proceedings of the 38th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2005

Peer-to-Peer protocols and applications have drawn much attention. Freenet is a groundbreaking Pe... more Peer-to-Peer protocols and applications have drawn much attention. Freenet is a groundbreaking Peer-to-Peer system that protects the anonymity of information producers, consumers, and holders. However, it has been reported that Freenet has a "poor worst-case performance, because a few bad routing choices can throw a request completely off track" . In this paper, we design and test look-ahead routing that reduces wrong turns and thus reduces the pathlength of data transfers. Each node checks with all of its immediate neighbors before continuing with the depth-first search. Results show a change in network traffic and a reduction in pathlength of up to 91% for 1-lookahead.

2008 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, 2008

Abstract Recent research has begun to report that female end-user programmers are often more relu... more Abstract Recent research has begun to report that female end-user programmers are often more reluctant than males to employ features that are useful for testing and debugging. These earlier findings suggest that, unless such features can be changed in some appropriate way, there are likely to be important gender differences in end-user programmerspsila benefits from these features. In this paper, we compare end-user programmerspsila feature usage in an environment that supports end-user debugging, ...

2009 ICSE Workshop on Software Engineering Foundations for End User Programming, 2009

End-user programmers may not be aware of many software engineering practices that would add great... more End-user programmers may not be aware of many software engineering practices that would add greater discipline to their efforts, and even if they are aware of them, these practices may seem too costly (in terms of time) to use. Without taking advantage of at least some of these practices, the software these end users create seems likely to continue to be less reliable than it could be. We are working on several ways of lowering both the perceived and actual costs of systematic software engineering practices, and on making their benefits more visible and immediate. Our approach is to leverage the user's cognitive effort through the use of distributed cognition, in which the system and user collaboratively work systematically to reason about the program the end user is creating. This paper demonstrates this concept with a few of our past efforts, and then presents three of our current efforts in this direction.

Computer, 2000

Studies building upon theories and research from several domains investigate how gender differenc... more Studies building upon theories and research from several domains investigate how gender differences interact with software.

Although there have been decades of research into how professional programmers debug, only recent... more Although there have been decades of research into how professional programmers debug, only recently has work begun to emerge about how end-user programmers attempt to debug their programs. Without understanding how end-user programmers approach debugging, we cannot build tools to adequately support their needs. To help fill this need, this paper reports the results of a qualitative empirical study that investigates in detail female and male enduser programmers' sensemaking about a spreadsheet's correctness. Using our study's data, we derived a sensemaking model for end-user debugging and then categorized participants' activities and verbalizations according to this model. We then used the categorized data to investigate how our participants went about debugging. Among the results are identification of the prevalence of information foraging during end-user debugging, two successful strategies for traversing the sensemaking model, ties to gender differences in the literature, sensemaking sequences leading to debugging progress, and sensemaking sequences tied with troublesome points in the debugging process. The results also reveal new implications for the design of spreadsheet tools to support female and male end-user programmers' sensemaking as they debug.

ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 2010

Can we learn about users' problem-solving strategies by observing their actions? This article int... more Can we learn about users' problem-solving strategies by observing their actions? This article introduces a data mining system that extracts complex behavioral patterns from logged user actions to discover users' high-level strategies. Our application domain is an HCI study aimed at revealing users' strategies in an end-user debugging task and understanding how the strategies relate to gender and to success. We cast this problem as a sequential pattern discovery problem, where user strategies are manifested as sequential behavior patterns. Problematically, we found that the patterns discovered by standard data mining algorithms were difficult to interpret and provided limited information about high-level strategies. To help interpret the patterns as strategies, we examined multiple ways of clustering the patterns into meaningful groups. This collectively led to interesting findings about users' behavior in terms of both gender differences and debugging success. These common behavioral patterns were novel HCI findings about differences in males' and females' behavior with software, and were verified by a parallel study with an independent data set on strategies. As a research endeavor into the interpretability issues faced by data mining techniques, our work also highlights important research directions for making data mining more accessible to non-data-mining experts.