André N. Meyer, Dr.

Senior Research Assistant

I am a senior researcher (Oberassistent), working with Prof. Thomas Fritz. My research interests lie in developers’ productivity and work, and in creating tools that foster productivity at work by using persuasive technologies such as self-monitoring and goal-setting.

In my research, I’ve built a tool, PersonalAnalytics, that increases developers’ awareness about work and productivity and helps them to come up with productive behavior changes. Another interesting solution that you might find interesting is FlowTeams, a software and hardware to support hybrid teams with better balancing focused work and teamwork.

During my PhD, I’ve interned and visited Microsoft Research (Redmond, US) several times and worked at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada) as a visiting researcher. After my PhD, I was the co-founder and CTO of OKOMO, a swiss-based SaaS startup which empowers companies to have personal interactions with their customers on online-channels. Afterwards, I’ve worked as the responsible person for regulatory affairs and quality management at ScanDiags, a health-tech AI-startup. There, I developed all the relevant (development and quality) processes. Now, I am back at UZH to continue the research I enjoy doing so much.

Find out more about my work on my blog, my Google Scholar-profile, and LinkedIn.

 

Publications

  • CSCW’25 Better Balancing Focused Work and Collaboration in Hybrid Teams by Cultivating the Sharing of Work Schedules. Andre N. Meyer, Thomas Fritz. Pre-Print.
  • CSCW’25 Exploring a Real-time Feedback Display of Non-verbal Cues in Online Work Meetings to Support Self-Presentation. Kevin Chow, Roy Rutishauser, Andre N. Meyer, Joanna McGrenere, Thomas Fritz. Pre-Print. Blog Post.
  • ICSE’24 On the Helpfulness of Answering Developer Questions on Discord with Similar Conversations and Posts from the Past. Alexander Lill, André N. Meyer, Thomas Fritz.
  • CSCW’23 Cultivating a Team Mindset about Productivity with a Nudge: A Field Study in Hybrid Development Teams. Thomas Fritz, Alexander Lill, André N. Meyer, Gail C. Murphy, Lauren Howe.
  • ICSE’23 Semi-Automatic, Inline and Collaborative Web Page Code Curations. Roy Rutishauser, André Meyer, Reid Holmes, Thomas Fritz. Conference Paper.
  • EURA’22 Performance of a deep convolutional neural network for MRI-based vertebral body measurements and insufficiency fracture detection. Christoph Germann, André Meyer, Matthias Staib, Reto Suter, Benjamin Fritz. Journal Paper.
  • TSE’20 Detecting Developers’ Task Switches and Types. André Meyer, Chris Satterfield, Manuela Züger, Katja Kevic, Gail Murphy, Thomas Zimmermann, and Thomas Fritz. Journal Paper.
  • CHI’20 Supporting Software Developers’ Focused Work on Window-Based Desktops. Jan Pilzer, Raphael Rosenast. André Meyer. Elaine Huang. Thomas Fritz. Conference Paper. Presentation.
  • Dissertation Fostering Software Developer Productivity through Awareness Increase and Goal-Setting. André Meyer. Dissertation.
  • TSE’19-2 Enabling Good Work Habits in Software Developers through Reflective Goal-Setting. André Meyer, Gail Murphy, Thomas Zimmermann, Thomas Fritz. Journal Paper. Presentation.
  • Springer’19 Fitbit for Developers: Self-Monitoring at Work. André Meyer, Thomas Fritz, Thomas Zimmermann. Book Chapter (Open Access).
  • Springer’19 Developers’ Diverging Perceptions of Productivity. André Meyer, Thomas Fritz, Thomas Zimmermann. Book Chapter (Open Access).
  • Springer’19 Reducing Interruptions at Work with FlowLight. Manuela Züger, André Meyer, Thomas Fritz, David Shepherd. Book Chapter (Open Access).
  • TSE’19-1 Today was a Good Day: The Daily Life of Software Developers. André Meyer, Earl Barr, Christian Bird. Thomas Zimmermann. Journal Paper.
  • CSCW’18 Design Recommendations for Self-Monitoring in the Workplace: Studies in Software Development. André Meyer, Gail Murphy, Thomas Zimmermann, Thomas Fritz. Conference Paper.
  • ICSE’18 Fostering Software Developers’ Productivity at Work through Self-Monitoring and Goal-Setting. André Meyer. Doctoral Symposium Track.
  • CHI’18 Sensing Interruptibility in the Office: A Field Study on the Use of Biometric and Computer Interaction Sensors. Manuela Züger, Sebastian Müller, André Meyer, Thomas Fritz. Conference Paper. Top 5%.
  • ESEM’17 Characterizing Software Developers by Perceptions of Productivity. André Meyer, Thomas Zimmermann, Thomas Fritz. Industry Track. (Blog Post)
  • TSE’17 The Work Life of Developers: Activities, Switches and Perceived Productivity. André Meyer, Gail Murphy, Thomas Zimmermann, Laura Barton, Thomas Fritz. Journal Paper. (Blog Post)
  • CHI’17 Reducing Interruptions at Work: A Large-Scale Field Study of FlowLight. Manuela Züger, Christopher Corley, André Meyer, Boyang Li, Thomas Fritz, David Shepherd, Vinay Augustine, Patrick Francis, Nicholas Kraft and Will Snipes. Conference Paper. Top 5%. Covered in The Telegraph, Wall Street Journal, GeekWire, DigitalTrends, The New Yorker, and 70 more.
  • FSE’14 Software Developers’ Perceptions of Productivity. André Meyer, Gail Murphy, Thomas Zimmermann, Thomas Fritz. Conference Paper. Best Paper Nominee.

Click here to find a complete list of publications.

Research Grants

  • 2024, DSI Infrastructure Grant: D2USP (100k)
  • 2024, DIZH Outreach Grant: MindfulPacer (50K)
  • 2024, DIZH Founder Grant: FlowTeams (75K)
  • 2023, DSI Seed Funding Grant: PersonalAnalytics (10K)
  • 2022, NRP Grant: SmartEnergy (60K)
  • 2021, DIZH Rapid Action Grant: FlowLight (76K)
  • And others

Teaching

  • 2024: Software Evolution and Developer Productivity Seminar (lead), CAS Fintech (Agile Introduction), CAS GAI (GAI in SE)
  • 2023: Software Evolution and Developer Productivity Seminar (lead), CAS Fintech, Software Lab SoPra (support)
  • 2022: Innovathon, Studium Digitale, GymInf, CAS Fintech, Software Lab SoPra (support)
  • 2020 Software Lab SoPra (lead)
  • 2017 Assistant: Human Aspects of Software Engineering
  • 2016 Assistant: Human Aspects of Software Engineering
  • 02/2015 – 07/2015 Teaching Assistant: Software Lab
  • 09/2013 – 12/2013 Teaching Assistant: Introduction into Programming

Project Supervisions

How I supervise student projects

  • Before inquiring about doing a project with me, carefully read and follow this guide. As I receive too many requests at the moment, I will likely not be able to reply to you if you don’t apply as we’ve outlined in the guide.
  • I generally offer thorough and thoughtful supervision throughout student projects. This includes bi-weekly meetings (30-45mins), giving asynchronous feedback, and also offering feedback on early drafts of your thesis/report. On the other hand, I expect you to respect my time and resources by coming prepared with questions, taking notes, and being succinct to not have meetings go over (out of respect to the next meeting attendee who might need to wait). This is also an opportunity to develop your time management skills, which is important in most professional or research jobs.
  • Tuesday and Thursday afternoons are generally times I reserve for supervising and giving feedback. My other days are usually reserved for my own research projects, teaching and other service in the community.
  • You’ll generally get the most thoughtful feedback if you send me a shared doc that I can annotate on my own time.
  • We also have a bi-weekly HASEL student meeting in which everyone briefly shares their project update in a scrum-like style. We highly recommend that you attend these, as these are a great chance to get quick feedback, get inspired from others’ projects, and recruit participants to evaluate your approaches/tools. Here’s the calendar and document (you might need to request access).
  • Ask questions. If you’re curious or unsure about something, don’t hesitate to ask.
Address

University of Zurich
Department of Informatics
Binzmühlestrasse 14
CH-8050 Zurich, Switzerland
Email

ameyer@ifi.uzh.ch
Office

BIN 2.B.20

Selected Publications

Senior Research Assistant

Better Balancing Focused Work and Collaboration in Hybrid Teams by Cultivating the Sharing of Work Schedules

In the context of hybrid knowledge work, striking a balance between individual focused work and team collaboration remains challenging. Existing approaches often fail to provide comprehensive and accurate presence awareness, as the necessary information is scattered across multiple applications and is frequently outdated, inaccurate or unavailable. To address this challenge, we introduce FlowTeams, a technology probe designed to (a) unify and combine presence information in one place, (b) cultivate the scheduling of workdays around focused work and collaboration, and (c) provide visibility of the information through both physical and digital presence awareness displays. In a field experiment, we deployed FlowTeams with 48 professionals across 10 hybrid working teams over an average of 6 weeks. The analysis of the collected data shows that the approach increased participants’ awareness of their co-workers’ availability, work hours and locations, and allowed them to better align their work schedules to their team’s, while also structuring their workdays according to individual preferences. Furthermore, the results reveal that FlowTeams successfully mediated intrusive interruptions, enabling participants to significantly enhance their focus when necessary, while maintaining effective, yet less taxing, teamwork. Our work underscores the potential for supporting hybrid knowledge workers in negotiating a better balance between focused work and teamwork.
read more

Senior Research Assistant

Enabling Good Work Habits in Software Developers through Reflective Goal-Setting

Software developers are generally interested in developing better habits to increase their workplace productivity and well-being, but have difficulties identifying concrete goals and actionable strategies to do so. In several areas of life, such as the physical activity and health domain, self-reflection has been shown to be successful at increasing people’s awareness about a problematic behavior, motivating them to define a self-improvement goal, and fostering goal-achievement. We therefore designed a reflective goal-setting study to learn more about developers’ goals and strategies to improve or maintain good habits at work. In our study, 52 professional software developers self-reflected about their work on a daily basis during two to three weeks, which resulted in a rich set of work habit goals and actionable strategies that developers pursue at work. We also found that purposeful, continuous self-reflection not only increases developers’ awareness about productive and unproductive work habits (84.5%), but also leads to positive self-improvements that increase developer productivity and well-being (79.6%). We discuss how tools could support developers with a better trade-off between the cost and value of workplace self-reflection and increase long-term engagement.
read more

Senior Research Assistant

Reducing Interruptions at Work: A Large-Scale Field Study of FlowLight

Interruptions at the workplace can consume a lot of time and cause frustration, especially if they happen at moments of high focus. To reduce costly interruptions, we developed the FlowLight, a small LED Lamp mounted at a worker's desk that computes a worker's availability for interruptions based on computer interaction and indicates it to her coworkers with colors, similar to a traffic light. In a large study with 449 participants, we found that the FlowLight reduced interruptions by 46%. We also observed an increased awareness of the potential harm of interruptions and an increased feeling of productivity. In this chapter, we present our insights from developing and evaluating FlowLight, and reflect on the key factors that contributed to its success. Interruptions at the workplace can consume a lot of time and cause frustration, especially if they happen at moments of high focus. To reduce costly interruptions, we developed the FlowLight, a small LED Lamp mounted at a worker's desk that computes a worker's availability for interruptions based on computer interaction and indicates it to her coworkers with colors, similar to a traffic light. In a large study with 449 participants, we found that the FlowLight reduced interruptions by 46%. We also observed an increased awareness of the potential harm of interruptions and an increased feeling of productivity. In this chapter, we present our insights from developing and evaluating FlowLight, and reflect on the key factors that contributed to its success.
read more

Senior Research Assistant

Today was a Good Day: The Daily Life of Software Developers

read more

Selected Projects

FlowLight & FlowTeams – Fostering Productive Work in Hybrid Workplaces

In today’s collaborative work environments, knowledge workers experience frequent interruptions from their co-workers, either in-person at the office or through online channels. We previously developed a research prototype, FlowLight, which reduces 46% of interruptions at work, by visualizing users’ current focus in a physical LED light. We are now aiming to adapt the FlowLight to today’s hybrid workplace scenarios and make it available to the public, to help foster deep work.

Members: André Meyer, Thomas Fritz

Deep Work
Developer Productivity
Wellbeing
Individual Productivity – Personal Analytics

Understanding software developers’ productivity, and devising approaches to allow developers to identify productive behavior changes through retrospection and self-reflection that fosters productivity and focus at work.

Members: André Meyer, Thomas Fritz

Deep Work
Developer Productivity
Personal Analytics
Wellbeing
Team Productivity

Exploring the patterns and challenges in building software products, and developing strategies to improve collaboration and wellbeing in the workplace.

Members: Alexander Lill, Anastasia Ruvimova, André Meyer, Thomas Fritz

Developer Productivity
Supporting Developer Workflows

One of the biggest impediments to software developer’s productivity in today’s (hybrid) work scenarios is the high work fragmentation, with developers constantly switching between tasks, and artifacts. Our work focuses on sensing software developers’ workflows and task context, to better support the cross-application, cross-artifact and multi-tasking nature of development work.

Members: Roy Rutishauser, André Meyer, Thomas Fritz

Developer Productivity
HASEL
Papers
Personal Analytics
Research