One of the least studied areas of Information Foraging Theory
is diet: the information foragers choose to seek. For
example, do foragers choose solely based on cost, or do
they stubbornly pursue certain diets regardless of cost? Do
their debugging strategies vary with their diets? To investigate
"what" and "how"...
The potential for machine learning systems to improve via a mutually beneficial exchange of information with users has yet to be explored in much detail. Previously, we found that users were willing to provide a generous amount of rich feedback to machine learning systems, and that the types of some...
Although machine learning is becoming commonly used in today's software, there has been little research into how end users might interact with machine learning systems, beyond communicating simple "right/wrong" judgments. If the users themselves could somehow work hand-in-hand with machine learning systems, the accuracy of learning systems could be improved...
If basic assumptions about how knowledge workers conceptualize and use work units are wrong, then any solutions resting on those assumptions are unlikely to be successful since, instead of decreasing costs, they will lead to increasing them. This paper reports on how knowledge workers understand, use and switch between units...
Although spreadsheets can be argued to be the most widely-used end-user programming languages today, they are very limited compared to other programming languages, supporting only a few built-in types and offering only primitive support for code reuse. The inheritance mechanisms of object-oriented programming might seem to offer help for the...
Although spreadsheets can be argued to be the most widely-used visual programming languages (VPLs) today, most are very limited compared to other VPLs, supporting only p few built-in types and offering only primitive support for code reuse. The inheritance mechanisms of object-oriented programming might seem to offer help for the...
How might capabilities for algorithm animation be seamlessly integrated into a programming language that is both visual and declarative? Until now, visual programming language researchers have not attempted to answer that question, making the fruits of algorithm animation available only to users of textual progranming languages. Users of visual programming...
This paper focuses on mining the strategies of problem solving software users by observing their actions. Our application domain is an HCI study aimed at discovering general strategies employed by software users and understanding how such strategies relate to gender and success. We cast this problem as a sequential pattern...
End users create software when they use spreadsheet systems, web authoring tools and graphical languages, and when they create educational simulations, macros-by-demonstration, and dynamic e-business web applications and mash-ups. Some end-user developers, such as accountants or teachers, may have no formal training at all in programming. Others, such as scientists...
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....