My research focuses on empirically studying software developers and on using personal and biometric data to improve software developers’ productivity and well-being. By better understanding what software developers need, what they experience, and how they operate on a daily basis, we will be able to provide better and more tailored support to developers as well as improve their productivity and the quality of the software they produce. In particular, I’m interested in:

• Developer Productivity / Personal Analytics: understanding software developers’ perceptions of productivity, providing a meaningful retrospection and fostering productive behavior in software developers.
  Selected publications in this area are: “Reducing Interruptions at Work: A Large-Scale Field Study of FlowLight” (Züger, Corley, Meyer, Li, Fritz, Shepherd, Augustine, Francis, Kraft, Snipes, CHI’17), “The Work Life of Developers: Activities, Switches and Perceived Productivity.” (Meyer, Barton, Murphy, Zimmermann, Fritz. TSE 2017), and “Persuasive Technology in the Real World: A Study of Long-Term Use of Activity Sensing Devices for Fitness.” (Fritz, Huang, Murphy, Zimmermann. CHI’14).
• Biometric Sensing: exploring the potential of biometric (aka. psycho-physiological) sensors to measure the difficulty, emotions, and interruptibility developers experience while working, and using these measures to provide better support, such as, by intervening before a developer creates a bug or the developer’s productivity is impeded.
  Selected publications in this area are: “Using (Bio)Metrics to Predict Code Quality Online.” (Müller, Fritz. ICSE’16), “Sensing Interruptibility in the Office: A Field Study on the Use of Biometric and Computer Interaction Sensors.” (Züger, Müller, Meyer, Fritz. CHI’18), and “Stuck and Frustrated or In Flow and Happy: Sensing Developers’ Emotions and Progress.” (Müller and Fritz. ICSE’14).
• Information Needs: empirically studying developers’ information needs, and devising developer-centric models that provide easy access to the relevant project information.
  Selected publications in this area are: “Tracing Software Developers’ Eyes and Interactions for Change Tasks.” (Kevic, Walters, Shaffer, Sharif, Fritz, Shepherd. FSE’15), “The Making of Cloud Applications – An Empirical Study on Software Development for the Cloud.” (Cito, Leitner, Fritz, Gall. FSE’15), and “Developers’ Code Context Models for Change Tasks.” (Fritz, Shepherd, Kevic, Snipes and Bräunlich. FSE’14).

Working with great students is one of the best parts of my job. I’m currently working with

• André N. Meyer (Postdoc at UZH)
• Alexander Lill (UZH)
• Anastasia Ruvimova (UZH)
• Roy Rutishauser (UZH)
• Isabelle Cuber (UZH)
• Juliana Souza (UZH)
• Chris Satterfield (UBC)
• Hayley Guillou (UBC)
• Jan Gugler (UZH)
• Kevin Chow (UBC)
• Nick Bradley (UBC)

and mentored and graduated several great students, including (in no particular order)

• @UZH: PhD students André N. Meyer (Postdoc and industry), Katja Kevic (Microsoft), Manuela Züger (IPT), Sebastian Müller (Zühlke), and MSc students including Catrin Loch, Christoph Bräunlich, Claudia Vogel, Raphael Rosenast, Yves Bilgerig, and Annatina Vinzenz.
• @UBC: Jan Pilzer (Microsoft), and Anna Scholz (Mozilla).

My research is funded by

• two Swiss National Science Foundation Grants,
• four ABB Software Research Grants (2013, 2014, and 2015, 2017-2020)
• one Canadian NSERC Collaborative Research and Development Grant,
• the European Commission’s FP7 ICT Call 10 program,
• a Microsoft SEIF Award.

My professional activities include (amongst others):

• member at-large for the Technical Council of Software Engineering (2015-2017)
• organizing committee member for FSE 2016, ICSE 2014, CSMR/WCRE 2014, ICSE 2013,
• treasurer for the Swiss Group for Object-Oriented Systems and Environments CHOOSE from 2011 to 2017,
• program committee member for MSR 2020, ICSE 2016, ICSE 2018, ICSE 2019 and ICSE 2017, ICPC 2018, ICPC 2016, ICSME 2016, ICPC 2015, ICSME 2015, MSR 2015, ICSE SEIP 2015, PROMISE 2015, ICSE Demos 2015, CSD Workshop at ICSE 2015, and reviewer for CHI’16, CHI’15 and several journals.

I am teaching courses on Software Engineering, the Software Praktikum, a graduate course on Human Aspects of Software Engineering, a seminar on advanced software engineering, and previously a course on Software Quality with Martin Glinz (FS’12). See the teaching section for more information.

Previously, I finished my PhD with Gail C. Murphy in the Software Practices Lab at the University of British Columbia in 2011. I received my Diplom degree from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich in 2005 and also worked in the OBASCO research group at the École des Mines de Nantes.

If you are a student interested in doing research in software engineering and in particular in the area I am interested in, let me know. I am happy to talk to you about possible options.