HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTIO N A,Journal of Theoretical, Empirical, and Methodologica l Issue s of User Science and of System Desig n Debugging: An Analysis of Bug-Locatio n Strategie s Irvin R. Katz and John R . Anderso n ABSTRACTS OF ARTICLE S Volume 3, Number 4, 1988 Analysis of the Cognition Involved i n Spreadsheet Software Interaction Judith Reitman Olson and Erik Nilse n This paper analyzes details of the cognition involve d when people use spreadsheet software, a task that i s both a major microcomputer application and a cognitively intense task . This task is analyzed i n terms of the GOMS model (Card, Moran, an d Newell, 1983), both to test the generality of th e model and to extend its set of parameters . We foun d that people using two seemingly simila r spreadsheet applications, Lotus 1-2-3 an d Multiplan, require very different amounts of time t o accomplish the same tasks . Experienced users o f Lotus 1-2-3 took far longer to complete the same fou r tasks than experienced Multiplan users did . Some of that additional time was found to be caused by th e fact that Lotus 1-2-3 offers a choice to users of tw o general methods to use to enter formulas . Lotu s requires that the user decide which to use. Thi s decision takes time . And, when the users type in th e values of the formula instead of using the cursor t o point to the cell in which the values reside, they pause a long time before each such typing entry . Presumably they are scanning the screen and calculating the coordinates to type in during the pause. Again, these cognitive processes take time . In an analysis of a second task, that of adjusting th e column width, there was substantial evidence tha t the performance changes when a method is repeated in close succession . This repetition affects th e parameters that reflect the time it takes to retriev e command parts from memory . When the parameters for scanning decision and repetitio n were added to the keystroke analysis of our task, w e found remarkable correspondence with the basic parameters from Card, Moran, and Newell's original work : the keystroke times and menta l preparation times from their original experiments were very close to the estimates of those sam e parameters in our tasks . However, in our analysi s of the spreadsheet task, we expanded the paramete r set in the keystroke model to account for performance in tasks that require substantial planning, scanning, and repetition . This paper presents a series of four experiments investigating students' debugging of LIS P programs . The experiments involve a population o f subjects who know LISP reasonably well and whose errors are best classified as slips (Brown & Va n Lehn, 1980) . That is, students are unlikely to repea t the same errors either within their program o r across programs (Experiment 1) . That the student s understand LISP is also reflected in their debuggin g behavior : students can usually fix a bug once they locate it . Students' difficulties are instead i n locating the errorful line of code . We observe tha t students use a variety of bug-location strategie s during debugging (Experiment 2) and that th e choice of strategy differs depending on whethe r students are debugging their own programs or other students' programs (Experiment 3) . In addition, w e observe that although the different bug-locatio n strategies affect which lines of a program ar e searched, once students decide on a line, thei r ability to judge whether or not the line is correct and their ability to correct an error are not substantiall y affected by the strategy being used to locate the lin e (Experiment 4). Finally, we argue that our result s have implications not only for debugging in other computer languages, but for the general processe s involved in troubleshooting as well . HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTIO N A Journal of Theoretical, Empirical, and Methodologica l Issue s of User Science and of System Desig n ABSTRACTS OF ARTICLE S Volume 4, Number 1, 198 9 Earcons and Icons : Their Structure and Common Design Principle s Meera M. Blattner, Denise A . Sumikawa, and Robert M. Greenberg In this paper we examine earcons, which are audio messages used in the user-computer interface t o provide information and feedback to the user about computer entities . (Earcons include messages an d functions, as well as states and labels .) We identif y some design principles that are common to both visual symbols and auditory messages, and discus s SIGCHI Bulletin July 1989 Volume 21, Number 1

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