School of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science

Margaret Burnett

Human issues of programming and software engineering, specifically: end-user programming, end-user software engineering, information foraging theory as applied to programming, and how gender issues relate to software

Alex Groce

Software engineering, particularly testing, model checking, code analysis, debugging, and error explanation

Cherri M. Pancake

User requirements and usability engineering; user interface design; adapting advanced IT to the specialized needs of scientists and engineers; distributed research collaboration

Martin Erwig

Language design and domain-specific languages; functional programming; visual languages; end-user programming (in particular, spreadsheets); end-user software engineering

Carlos Jensen

Usability aspects of open source software development, distributed collaboration, and social aspects of joining open source projects; information overload; usable privacy and security

Christopher Scaffidi

Intersection of software engineering and human-computer interaction, especially related to end-user programming and code reuse. Current director of the EUSES Consortium

 

Research Facilities

EUSES Lab

This lab is used by our faculty and students for group-based studies of users and other research activities requiring multiple people and set-up over time, such as collaborative software development and multi-session group brainstorming sessions. It features space to spread out, white board and wall space to hold notes over the long term, and about a dozen computers with special instrumentation that can be used to conduct group user studies.

HCI Lab

This lab is used by our faculty and students for controlled studies of how individual or small groups of users interact with different types of tools. It includes a whiteboard, large display systems, a Tobii eye-tracking system, 3 remote controllable cameras, and heart-rate monitoring equipment.

Research Partners

• Air Force Research Lab (Mesa, AZ)
• IBM Research (Almaden, CA)
• IBM Research (Hawthorne, NY)
• Cambridge University (UK)
• Carnegie Mellon University
• City University London (UK)
• Drexel University
• Intel Corporation
• Pennsylvania State University
• Saturday Academy
• University of Nebraska
• University of Paderborn (Germany)
• University of Toronto (Canada)
• University of Washington
• Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Selected Projects

Adaptation-Based Programming

(Fern, Erwig, Nguyen)

• Finding mixed strategies for combining deterministic programming and machine learning, leading to a new programming paradigm called "adaptation-based programming"
• Developing a theoretical model for adaptation-based programming and designing a Java library to make the ideas widely usable
• Application to game programming and network protocols

End-User Software Engineering

(Burnett, Erwig, Groce, Jensen, Law, Niess, Scaffidi, Wong)

• Investigates ways to bring the benefits of rigorous software engineering methodologies to end-user programmers (such as spreadsheet users) who have no training or interest in software engineering.
• This is an international consortium with 8 member institutions, with its home base as OSU. (The other institutions are: Cambridge University (UK), Carnegie Mellon University, Drexel University, IBM, Pennsylvania State University, University of Nebraska, University of Washington). Project Director: Christopher Scaffidi.
• Funded by: multiple NSF grants.

End-User Debugging and Testing of Machine Learning

(Burnett, Groce, Wong)

• Investigates how end users can problem solve about the way intelligent assistants are attempting to help them, how they can know how much to trust the assistant system, how they can guide the system to correct its flaws, and how the machine learning component can take the user's guidance into account effectively.
• Funded by: NSF, Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

Gender HCI

(Burnett, Jensen)

• Investigates whether there are gender differences that relate to software tools and development environments, and develops new features and software that account for these differences to make the tools better for everybody.
• Funded by: multiple NSF grants, Microsoft Research.

Information Foraging Theory in Software Maintenance

(Burnett, Scaffidi)

• Investigates an underlying theory as to how people perform software maintenance, and how software tools informed by that theory can improve people's ability to perform maintenance tasks such as debugging.
• Funded by: Air Force Office of Scientific Research, IBM Research grants.

Open Source Joining and Social Dynamics

(Jensen)

• Investigates the hurdles users of Open Source projects face when seeking to contribute to an open source project, including the learning hurdles, the tools available, and the social interactions that occur.
• Investigates various mechanisms for increasing participation and success in open source project at the university level. This includes developing a custom project hosting site (http://beaversource.oregonstate.edu), and an open computer platform called the OSWALD (http://beaversource.oregonstate.edu/projects/cspfl).
• Funded by: NSF