Details
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | 2019 IEEE/ACM 6th International Workshop on Eye Movements in Programming, EMIP 2019 |
| Subtitle of host publication | Proceedings |
| Publisher | Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc. |
| Pages | 2-9 |
| Number of pages | 8 |
| ISBN (electronic) | 978-1-7281-2243-4 |
| ISBN (print) | 978-1-7281-2244-1 |
| Publication status | Published - May 2019 |
| Event | 2019 IEEE/ACM 6th International Workshop on Eye Movements in Programming (EMIP) - Montreal, Canada Duration: 27 May 2019 → 27 May 2019 |
Abstract
In software projects, people often continue working on programs that others created. This is especially the case in agile development. Therefore, developers often need to understand unfamiliar code in order to expand, change, fix or review it. Navigating through code and searching for relevant information requires a lot of developer time. This paper introduces an approach to use eye tracking to record and transfer developers' attention during software maintenance. We visualize the recorded data with heatmaps and display switches between Java classes by coloring filenames. These attention representations aim to help developers finding and navigating to relevant code sections faster. We conducted an eye tracking experiment to investigate whether these attention visualizations help developers during software maintenance. The results show that both representations helped some of the participants for orientation and code finding purposes. The heatmaps slightly decreased the cognitive load as well. However, most participants, especially the more experienced ones, rated the attention visualizations as barely helpful or not helpful. Instead, the representations increased their visual effort, reduced the code's clarity and made the overall understanding of the program's functionality, as well as finding relevant areas, more difficult. By testing this specific implementation of the approach of attention transfer, we gained important lessons learned and provide several improvement suggestions.
Keywords
- Attention transfer, Eye tracking, Focused attention, Program comprehension, Software maintenance
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Computer Science(all)
- Software
- Neuroscience(all)
- Sensory Systems
- Social Sciences(all)
- Human Factors and Ergonomics
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2019 IEEE/ACM 6th International Workshop on Eye Movements in Programming, EMIP 2019: Proceedings. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc., 2019. p. 2-9 8834695.
Research output: Chapter in book/report/conference proceeding › Conference contribution › Research › peer review
}
TY - GEN
T1 - Attention in software maintenance
T2 - 2019 IEEE/ACM 6th International Workshop on Eye Movements in Programming (EMIP)
AU - Ahrens, Maike
AU - Schneider, Kurt
AU - Busch, Melanie
PY - 2019/5
Y1 - 2019/5
N2 - In software projects, people often continue working on programs that others created. This is especially the case in agile development. Therefore, developers often need to understand unfamiliar code in order to expand, change, fix or review it. Navigating through code and searching for relevant information requires a lot of developer time. This paper introduces an approach to use eye tracking to record and transfer developers' attention during software maintenance. We visualize the recorded data with heatmaps and display switches between Java classes by coloring filenames. These attention representations aim to help developers finding and navigating to relevant code sections faster. We conducted an eye tracking experiment to investigate whether these attention visualizations help developers during software maintenance. The results show that both representations helped some of the participants for orientation and code finding purposes. The heatmaps slightly decreased the cognitive load as well. However, most participants, especially the more experienced ones, rated the attention visualizations as barely helpful or not helpful. Instead, the representations increased their visual effort, reduced the code's clarity and made the overall understanding of the program's functionality, as well as finding relevant areas, more difficult. By testing this specific implementation of the approach of attention transfer, we gained important lessons learned and provide several improvement suggestions.
AB - In software projects, people often continue working on programs that others created. This is especially the case in agile development. Therefore, developers often need to understand unfamiliar code in order to expand, change, fix or review it. Navigating through code and searching for relevant information requires a lot of developer time. This paper introduces an approach to use eye tracking to record and transfer developers' attention during software maintenance. We visualize the recorded data with heatmaps and display switches between Java classes by coloring filenames. These attention representations aim to help developers finding and navigating to relevant code sections faster. We conducted an eye tracking experiment to investigate whether these attention visualizations help developers during software maintenance. The results show that both representations helped some of the participants for orientation and code finding purposes. The heatmaps slightly decreased the cognitive load as well. However, most participants, especially the more experienced ones, rated the attention visualizations as barely helpful or not helpful. Instead, the representations increased their visual effort, reduced the code's clarity and made the overall understanding of the program's functionality, as well as finding relevant areas, more difficult. By testing this specific implementation of the approach of attention transfer, we gained important lessons learned and provide several improvement suggestions.
KW - Attention transfer
KW - Eye tracking
KW - Focused attention
KW - Program comprehension
KW - Software maintenance
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85073456155&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/emip.2019.00009
DO - 10.1109/emip.2019.00009
M3 - Conference contribution
SN - 978-1-7281-2244-1
SP - 2
EP - 9
BT - 2019 IEEE/ACM 6th International Workshop on Eye Movements in Programming, EMIP 2019
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Y2 - 27 May 2019 through 27 May 2019
ER -