Call for Participation: TACOS – Improving Resumption of Interrupted Developer Tasks – Human Aspects of Software Engineering Lab, University of Zurich

21.10.2024 by Alexander Lill

Call for Participation: TACOS – Improving Resumption of Interrupted Developer Tasks

We are inviting software developers to participate in our lab study exploring the effects of 🌮 TACOS, a VS Code Extension that supports developers in resuming their development tasks after an interruption.

In their daily work, developers are frequently interrupted, for example by walk-ins from colleagues, meetings, or urgent messages and requests. When coming back to their development work after an interruption, developers often struggle with resuming their work, as they have to recall both what they wanted to do before the interruption, and what they already have done towards that goal.

This study aims to evaluate how 🌮 TACOS can support developers with resuming their tasks after an interruption by summarizing the developers’ most recent activity within both the IDE and browser. This information is presented in different formats upon task resumption.

Procedure

You can participate virtually (through MS Teams) at a time convenient to you.
The lab study takes around 1 hour and 45 minutes.
We will ask you to work on and switch between three tasks using a virtual machine.
You are allowed to look up anything on the internet, however, coding assistants are disabled.
Afterward, we will ask you about your experience through a short interview.

Reward

By participating in this study, you are contributing to an ongoing effort to improve the workflow and productivity of developers.

In addition, you will…

… receive a gift certificate of 35 EUR/CHF/USD for Amazon, Starbucks, Galaxus, or OrellFüessli.
… have the chance to learn more about your habits upon interruption, and task switching and resumption strategies

Data Privacy

The study is conducted inside a Virtual Machine, which means that no data from your own computer will be collected. In the VM, the software will capture data from the web browser, such as visited websites, and the IDE, such as the changes made and the shown code elements. You can find more details about the collected data on the Consent Form.