Concise Representation of research paper titled as "Programmer information needs after memory failure"

1. PROGRAMMER INFORMATION
NEEDS
AFTER MEMORY FAILURE
CHRIS PARNIN & SPENCER RUGABER
PRESENTED BY
BHAGYASHREE DEOKAR
TAMILTHAARAGAI MUTHUKUMAR

2. TOPICS
• Introduction
• Types of Memory
• Memory Failures
• Information Needs
• Tools & Devices
• Ongoing Research
• Discussion &Conclusion
• References

3. Introduction
Desired EnvironmentActual Office Environment

4. Introduction
What is difference between workspaces?What is your preference?
What all things can cause interruptions to programmer’s life in office as well as home?
Do you think taking a break and having an interruptions are different? How?

5. THE COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE OF
MEMORY
Memory types used heavily during programming:
 Prospective
 Attentive
 Associative
 Episodic
 Conceptual

6. Reborn from Memory Failures !!
Discussion
“Mental Modelling of Program Context facilitates quick recovery from
memory failures” ?
What is your generic style of coding model ?

7. PROSPECTIVE MEMORY
 “Remembering to Remember”
 Storage of Intended action and it’s retrieval cue
 Holds reminders for future action
 Prone to:
 Monitor Failure
 Engage Failure
 Solution : Smart Reminders
 - Reminder Condition
 - Notification Mechanism
 - Reminder Message

8. DISCUSSION
How long does it take for you to get back in the groove with former task?
What could be the factors causing monitor failures
Passive Notification vs obstructive Notifications vs Constrictive Notifications
“Unless intentions are periodically refreshed by attentional checks in the interim,
there is a concern that they will become overlaid by other cognitive demands”

9. ATTENTIVE MEMORY
 Highly volatile and prone to frequent failure
 Prone toConcentration failure & Limit failure
 Example: Refactoring of code
 Rely on Compile Error
 Information needs:
 Need focused attention
Attending to various program location
 Tools:Touch Point
 Related Device: Bookmarks,TaskContext

10. Discussion
What you guys do to avoid impact of distraction when you are working on tasks like
refactoring of code?
Do you think any other information user needs when it comes to dealing with attentive
memory?

11. Associative Memory
Records traces and features of experiences
Example: Navigate through unknown codebase
Prone to Retention failure, Association failure
Rely on tabs, scrollbars to keep context
Information Needs:
 Need diverse and distinguishable features
 Need support for indexing into associative memory via multiple
modalities
Tools : Association Links
Related Device: NavTracs, Code Bubbles, Code Canvass

12. Discussion
What are the contextual elements that you need for association while
navigating through unknown codebase? Example
Video
Can you find any other information needs from this video?

13. ACTIVITY

14. EPISODIC MEMORY
 Recollection of past events
 Source Failure
 Recording a stream of events, contextual details –
code snapshots, search terms & Results,
address of code samples and stack traces
 Recollection Failure
 Obstacle Narrative Structure – Setting, Conflict, Investigation and Resolution
 Tutorial Narrative Structure – Setting (Procedure and code Snippet) and Conclusion
 Devices : Information Quests and Code Replays

15. DISCUSSION
“Presenting information about a past programming session in an episodic
manner improves recall of a past programming task” – Does this statement
holds good?
“A programming task that can span several days, a code replay can
overwhelm a programmer with an excessively long and unstructured
sequence of code changes.” ?

16. CONCEPTUAL MEMORY
FormingConcept
Prone to:
Activation Failure
Formation Failure
 Conceptualize: Sketching, diagramming
and note-taking
Information Needs:
Refresh and review before resuming with task
Tool: Memlet
Related Devices:Concern Mapper & Code Folding

17. Discussion
Does visualization (Sketches & Diagrams) refine your power of
conceptualization?
Is this a valid statement - “Explicit mapping between layers of
abstraction plays a role in Conceptualization” ?
How Novices and Experts deal with different levels of Conceptual
Memory Failures ?

18. Ongoing Research
Development of “GroupBar”
Categorization of interruption then analyzing its effect
Research should also include context of user
workspace and type of interruption
Complexity of task
Length of interruption

19. DISCUSSION & CONCLUSION
Semantics for language are easier to remember than syntactic
“Worklets” to handle different types of failure
Do you think is it possible to deal with all different failures through one tool or
different plugins?Which is better way?
If we use all plugins and extensions in one tool, do you think that will be best tool for
developer?

20. References
• [1] Czerwinski Eric Mary, SusanWilhite Horvitz, “A Diary Study ofTask Switching and
Interruptions”, CHI 2004
• [2] M.-A.D. Storey, F.D. Fracchia , H.A. Muller, Cognitive design elements to support the
construction of a mental model during software exploration”, onThe Journal of Systems and
Software 44”
• [3] Cherubini Mauro,Venolia Gina, DeLine Rob, J. Ko Andrew “Let’s Go to the Whiteboard:
How andWhy Software Developers Use Drawings”, CHI 2007 Proceedings
• [4] A. J. Ko, M. J. Coblenz, and H. H. Aung, “An exploratory study of how developers seek,
relate, and collect relevant information during software maintenance tasks,” IEEETrans.
Softw. Eng.,
• [5] Gloria Mark,Victor M. Gonzalez, Justin Harris, Donald Bren, “NoTask Left Behind?
Examining the Nature of Fragmented Work”,
• [6] ShamsiT. Iqbal, Xianjun Sam Zheng, Brian P. Bailey, “Task-Evoked Pupillary Response to
MentalWorkload in Human-Computer Interaction ”