Thursday, September 6, 2007
Time: 3:30
Location: ECCR
265
Margaret Burnett
Professor of Computer
Science at the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Oregon
State University
End-User Software Engineering: Surprise-Explain-Reward
Abstract
In this talk, we will consider what happens
when we add to end-user programming environments consideration of the software
lifecycle beyond the "coding" phase. Considering other phases is necessary,
because there is ample evidence that the programs end users create are filled
with errors. To help address this problem, we have been working on an approach
to software engineering for end users. It incorporates support for software engineering
devices to help end-user programmers with, for example, systematic testing and
fault localization. The catch: the user is not assumed to have expertise or even
interest in software engineering. In this talk, I will focus on our "Surprise-Explain-Reward" strategy
for motivating male and female end users to employ these software engineering
devices for end-user programmers.
Bio:
Margaret Burnett is a Professor of Computer Science at
the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Oregon State University.
Her research focuses on human issues of programming languages and environments,
especially when the programming is done by people not trained as professional
programmers. She is the principal architect of the Forms/3 and the FAR visual
programming languages and, together with Gregg Rothermel, of the WYSIWYT testing
methodology for end-user programmers. She is also currently Project Director
of the EUSES Consortium, an NSF-funded multi-institution collaboration among
Oregon State University, Carnegie Mellon, Pennsylvania State, University of
Nebraska, Drexel University, University of Cambridge (U.K.), and, most recently,
IBM, to help End Users Shape Effective Software.
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