A case study of using HCI methods to improve tools for programmers

For more than five years, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have been collaborating with several SAP teams to improve the usability of SAP's developer tools and programming APIs. Much research has shown that HCI techniques can improve the tools that developers use to write software. In a recent project, we applied HCI techniques to a SAP developer tool for the SAP NetWeaver Gateway product. The SAP team building this tool uses agile software development processes, which allowed them to quickly improve the tool's usability based upon the evaluations.

[1]  Brad A. Myers,et al.  Jadeite: improving API documentation using usage information , 2009, CHI Extended Abstracts.

[2]  Brad A. Myers,et al.  Calcite: Completing Code Completion for Constructors Using Crowds , 2010, 2010 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing.

[3]  Brad A. Myers,et al.  Using HCI techniques to design a more usable programming system , 2002, Proceedings IEEE 2002 Symposia on Human Centric Computing Languages and Environments.

[4]  Brad A. Myers,et al.  Debugging reinvented , 2008, 2008 ACM/IEEE 30th International Conference on Software Engineering.

[5]  Jeffrey Stylos,et al.  A case study of API redesign for improved usability , 2008, 2008 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing.

[6]  Sae Young Jeong,et al.  Usability challenges for enterprise service-oriented architecture APIs , 2008, 2008 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing.

[7]  Kuldeep Kelkar,et al.  When user experience met agile: a case study , 2009, CHI Extended Abstracts.

[8]  Brad A. Myers,et al.  Improving API documentation using API usage information , 2009, 2009 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC).

[9]  Brad A. Myers,et al.  Using Association Metrics to Help Users Navigate API Documentation , 2010, 2010 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing.

[10]  Sae Young Jeong,et al.  Studying the Documentation of an API for Enterprise Service-Oriented Architecture , 2010, J. Organ. End User Comput..

[11]  Thomas D. LaToza,et al.  Visualizing call graphs , 2011, 2011 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC).

[12]  Margaret M. Burnett,et al.  Invited research overview: end-user programming , 2006, CHI Extended Abstracts.

[13]  Cathleen Wharton,et al.  Testing a walkthrough methodology for theory-based design of walk-up-and-use interfaces , 1990, CHI '90.

[14]  Jakob Nielsen,et al.  Usability engineering , 1997, The Computer Science and Engineering Handbook.

[15]  R. Fielding,et al.  Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures (CHAPTER 5) , 2000 .

[16]  Marilyn Hughes Blackmon,et al.  Cognitive walkthrough for the web , 2002, CHI.