Journal Article

How Do Users Discover New Tools in Software Development and Beyond?

Thumbnail Image

Fulltext URI

Document type

Text/Journal Article

Additional Information

Date

2015, 2015

Authors

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Source

Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW): Vol. 24, No. 5

Publisher

Springer

Abstract

Software users rely on software tools such as browser tab controls and spell checkers to work effectively and efficiently, but it is difficult for users to be aware of all the tools that might be useful to them. While there are several potential technical solutions to this difficulty, we know little about social solutions, such as one user telling a peer about a tool. To explore these social solutions, we conducted two studies, an interview study and a diary study. The interview study describes a series of interviews with 18 programmers in industry to explore how tool discovery takes place. To broaden our findings to a wider group of software users, we then conducted a diary study of 76 software users in their workplaces. One finding was that social learning of software tools, while sometimes effective, is infrequent; software users appear to discover tools from peers only once every few months. We describe several implications of our findings, such as that discovery from peers can be enhanced by improving software users’ ability to communicate openly and concisely about tools.

Description

Murphy-Hill, Emerson; Lee, Da Young; Murphy, Gail C.; McGrenere, Joanna (2015): How Do Users Discover New Tools in Software Development and Beyond?. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW): Vol. 24, No. 5. DOI: 10.1007/s10606-015-9230-9. Springer. PISSN: 1573-7551. pp. 389-422

Keywords

Discovery, Learning, Programmers, Programming tools

Citation

DOI

10.1007/s10606-015-9230-9

URI

URI

http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10606-015-9230-9
 https://dl.eusset.eu/handle/20.500.12015/3857

Collections

JCSCW Vol. 24 (2015)

Endorsement

Review

Supplemented By

Referenced By

Number of citations to item: 24

  • Yushan Pan, Sisse Finken (2018): From Offshore Operation to Onshore Simulator: Using Visualized Ethnographic Outcomes to Work with Systems Developers, In: Informatics 1(5), doi:10.3390/informatics5010010
  • Charles Weir, Awais Rashid, James Noble (2020): Challenging software developers: dialectic as a foundation for security assurance techniques, In: Journal of Cybersecurity 1(6), doi:10.1093/cybsec/tyaa007
  • Emerson Murphy-Hill, Alberto Elizondo, Ambar Murillo, Marian Harbach, Bogdan Vasilescu, Delphine Carlson, Florian Dessloch (2024): GenderMag Improves Discoverability in the Field, Especially for Women, In: Proceedings of the IEEE/ACM 46th International Conference on Software Engineering, doi:10.1145/3597503.3639097
  • Balasaravanan Thoravi Kumaravel, Cuong Nguyen, Stephen DiVerdi, Bjoern Hartmann (2020): TransceiVR, In: Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, doi:10.1145/3379337.3415827
  • Brittany Johnson, Christian Bird, Denae Ford, Nicole Forsgren, Thomas Zimmermann (2023): Make Your Tools Sparkle with Trust: The PICSE Framework for Trust in Software Tools, In: 2023 IEEE/ACM 45th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Practice (ICSE-SEIP), doi:10.1109/icse-seip58684.2023.00043
  • Qing Nancy Xia, Advait Sarkar, Duncan P. Brumby, Anna Cox (2024): The Paradox of Spreadsheet Self-Efficacy: Social Incentives for Informal Knowledge Sharing in End-User Programming, In: 2024 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC), doi:10.1109/vl/hcc60511.2024.00019
  • Chris Brown (2019): Digital Nudges for Encouraging Developer Actions, In: 2019 IEEE/ACM 41st International Conference on Software Engineering: Companion Proceedings (ICSE-Companion), doi:10.1109/icse-companion.2019.00082
  • Chris Brown, Chris Parnin (2020): Understanding the impact of GitHub suggested changes on recommendations between developers, In: Proceedings of the 28th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering, doi:10.1145/3368089.3409722
  • Kimia Kiani, Parmit K. Chilana, Andrea Bunt, Tovi Grossman, George Fitzmaurice (2020): “I Would Just Ask Someone”: Learning Feature-Rich Design Software in the Modern Workplace, In: 2020 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC), doi:10.1109/vl/hcc50065.2020.9127288
  • Balasaravanan Thoravi Kumaravel, Björn Hartmann (2022): Interactive Mixed-Dimensional Media for Cross-Dimensional Collaboration in Mixed Reality Environments, In: Frontiers in Virtual Reality, doi:10.3389/frvir.2022.766336
  • Raphaël Perraud, Aurélien Tabard, Sylvain Malacria (2024): Tutorial mismatches: understanding the frictions due to interface differences when following software video tutorials, In: Designing Interactive Systems Conference, doi:10.1145/3643834.3661511
  • Chris Brown, Chris Parnin (2020): Comparing Different Developer Behavior Recommendation Styles, In: Proceedings of the IEEE/ACM 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering Workshops, doi:10.1145/3387940.3391481
  • Chris Brown, Justin Middleton, Esha Sharma, Emerson Murphy-Hill (2017): How software users recommend tools to each other, In: 2017 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC), doi:10.1109/vlhcc.2017.8103460
  • Laton Vermette, Joanna McGrenere, Colin Birge, Adam Kelly, Parmit K. Chilana (2019): Freedom to Personalize My Digital Classroom, In: Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, doi:10.1145/3290605.3300548
  • Marko Gasparic, Tural Gurbanov, Francesco Ricci (2018): Improving integrated development environment commands knowledge with recommender systems, In: Proceedings of the 40th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training, doi:10.1145/3183377.3183386
  • Charles Weir, Lynne Blair, Ingolf Becker, Angela Sasse, James Noble (2018): Light-Touch Interventions to Improve Software Development Security, In: 2018 IEEE Cybersecurity Development (SecDev), doi:10.1109/secdev.2018.00019
  • M. Hucka, M.J. Graham (2018): Software search is not a science, even among scientists: A survey of how scientists and engineers find software, In: Journal of Systems and Software, doi:10.1016/j.jss.2018.03.047
  • Emerson Murphy-Hill, Edward K. Smith, Caitlin Sadowski, Ciera Jaspan, Collin Winter, Matthew Jorde, Andrea Knight, Andrew Trenk, Steve Gross (2019): Do Developers Discover New Tools On The Toilet?, In: 2019 IEEE/ACM 41st International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), doi:10.1109/icse.2019.00059
  • Chris Brown, Chris Parnin (2020): Sorry to Bother You Again, In: Proceedings of the IEEE/ACM 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering Workshops, doi:10.1145/3387940.3391506
  • Torkil Clemmensen (2021): HWID Consultancy, In: Human–Computer Interaction Series, doi:10.1007/978-3-030-71796-4_8
  • Marko Gasparic, Francesco Ricci (2020): IDE Interaction Support With Command Recommender Systems, In: IEEE Access, doi:10.1109/access.2020.2967840
  • Torkil Clemmensen, Jacob Nørbjerg (2020): Digital Peer-Tutoring: Early Results from a Field Evaluation of a UX at Work Learning Format in SMEs, In: Lecture Notes in Computer Science, doi:10.1007/978-3-030-46540-7_6
  • Yuriy Brun, Tian Lin, Jessie Elise Somerville, Elisha M. Myers, Natalie Ebner (2023): Blindspots in Python and Java APIs Result in Vulnerable Code, In: ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology 3(32), doi:10.1145/3571850
  • Päivi Raulamo-Jurvanen, Simo Hosio, Mika V. Mäntylä (2019): Applying Surveys and Interviews in Software Test Tool Evaluation, In: Lecture Notes in Computer Science, doi:10.1007/978-3-030-35333-9_2
Please note: Providing information about citations is only possible thanks to to the open metadata APIs provided by crossref.org and opencitations.net. These lists may be incomplete due to unavailable citation data.source: opencitations.net, crossref.org