Most of the work so far in the subfield of Gender HCI has followed a theory-driven approach. Established theories, however, do not take into account specific issues that arise in end-user debugging. We suspected that there may be important information that we were overlooking. We therefore employed a methodology change:...
There has been little prior research reporting strategy usage in end-user problem solving, and even less using gender as a factor. Without this type of information, enduser programming systems cannot know the “target” at which to aim, if they are to support male and female end-user programmers’ debugging. As a...
Previous work introduced the GenderMag method, a software inspection method used to help software creators identify features within their software that are not gender-inclusive. Inclusiveness of software (gender or otherwise) matters because supporting diversity matters—it is well-known that the more diverse a group of problem-solvers, the higher the quality of...
Most software systems today do not support cognitive diversity. Further, because of differences in problem-solving styles that cluster by gender, software that poorly supports cognitive diversity can also embed gender biases. To help software professionals fix gender bias “bugs” related to people’s problem-solving styles for information processing and learning of...
? ......................................................................................................................................................2
B Information Processing Style (InfoProc Style
The results of a machine learning from user behavior can be thought of as a program, and like all programs, it may need to be debugged. Providing ways for the user to debug it matters because without the ability to fix errors, users may find that the learned program’s errors...
Although researchers have begun to explicitly support end-user programmers’ debugging by providing information to help them find bugs, there is little research addressing the right content to communicate to these users. The specific semantic content of these debugging communications matters because, if the users are not actually seeking the information...
Programmers spend a substantial fraction of their debugging time by navigating
through source code, yet little is known about how programmers navigate. With the
continuing growth in size and complexity of software, this fraction of time is likely to
increase, which presents challenges to those seeking both to understand and...
There has been little research into how end-user programming environments can provide explanations that could fill a critical information gap for end-user debuggers – help with debugging strategy. To address this need, we designed and prototyped a video-based approach for explaining debugging strategy, and accompanied it with a text-only approach....
End-user programmers face many barriers in programming. Research has seen many programming environments that attempted to lower or remove the barriers but despite these efforts, empirical studies continue to report barriers users face. To investigate this issue, we took a theory-informed approach. Using theories from design, creativity, and problem solving...
Professional software engineers have an arsenal of techniques such as unit testing and assertions to check their specifications, but these techniques require tools, motivation, experience and training that programmers without professional software engineering training may not have. As a result, professionals in other fields, such as scientific modelers, face greater...