Cognitive walkthrough + personae = an empirical infrastructure for modeling software developers

Author

Naghshin, R. ; Seffah, A. ; Kline, R.

Author_Institution

HCSE Group, Concordia Univ., Montreal, Que., Canada

fYear

2003

fDate

28-31 Oct. 2003

Firstpage

239

Lastpage

241

Abstract

This is the third in a series of reports about usability and learnability problems of integrated development environments (IDE). The first report used the method of ethnographic interviews, and the second report the methods of heuristic and psychometric evaluation to study problems that developers face in using IDEs. The present study extends previous work by applying the method of direct behavioral observation of more versus less experienced users of the same IDE for C++. We demonstrate in this paper how one can effectively use cognitive walkthroughs and code walkthroughs for empirically modeling developers´ characteristics and personae.

Keywords

C++ language; behavioural sciences; programming environments; software reusability; user centred design; code walkthrough; cognitive walkthrough; ethnographic interview; heuristic evaluation; integrated development environments; learnability problem; psychometric evaluation; software developers modeling; usability problem; Application software; Java; Keyboards; Mice; Process design; Programming profession; Psychology; Usability; User interfaces; Workstations;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Human Centric Computing Languages and Environments, 2003. Proceedings. 2003 IEEE Symposium on

Print_ISBN

0-7803-8225-0

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/HCC.2003.1260235

Filename

1260235