Abstract:
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 end-user 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.
