Utility and accuracy of smell-driven performance analysis for end-user programmers

This paper proposes a technique, called Smell-driven performance analysis (SDPA), which automatically provides situated explanations within a visual dataflow language IDE to help end-user programmers to overcome performance problems without leaving the visual dataflow paradigm. An experiment showed SDPA increased end-user programmers’ success rates at finding performance problems and decreased the time required for finding solutions. Another study, based on using SDPA to analyze a corpus of example end-user programs, revealed that it is usually accurate at identifying performance problems. Based on these results, we conclude that SDPA provides a reliable basis for helping end-user programmers to troubleshoot performance problems, as well as a potential foundation for future work aimed at training users and at aiding code reuse.Keywords: End-user programming, Visual language, PerformanceKeywords: End-user programming, Visual language, Performanc

Design Thinking: Design's Prodigal Son? Iterations, Journal of Design Research and Practice

Businesses are increasingly facing complex, even wicked, operating conditions with hyper-competition, digital disruption, faster cycle-times, a shift in power to their consumers and often a race to the bottom in pricing as the internet provides a new (and, at times, unhelpful) level of transparency. The twin forces of globalisation and digitisation are removing the traditional barriers to entry so that established firms can no longer rely on manufacturing capacity, global supply chain or even great distribution channels to stop challengers capsizing their business. Despite such hostile conditions, companies are still tasked with revenue and share growth. Many businesses look to innovation as their saviour and they pile resources into new product development. However, results are generally patchy because innovation is risky, it's messy, it's nonlinear, it carries a high risk of failure and most companies don't have the skilled personnel or the experience to navigate their way through the potential minefield of creating new products, new experiences, new services or new business models. But there is one innovation technique, in particular, to which many businesses are turning. Design Thinking has attracted significant attention in the management journals, in the business press and in business in general. It has been championed by established global brands like Apple and, equally, by disruptors like Hailo and Airbnb. Ironically, the one constituency in which it is still regarded with a degree of suspicion is the design industry itself. Some suggest that this is because the design community are shy of oversimplifying their object of study. This article will examine the rise and rise of Design Thinking and explain precisely what it is and how it has evolved from the theory and practice of design. Finally, we speculate whether the Prodigal Son is, in fact, a relevant metaphor and we conclude that more insight might be found in one of Aesop's fables

Helping end-user programmers find and fix performance problems in visual code

End-user programmers often struggle to create programs that run quickly and effectively, which can be a major deterrent in completing their tasks as desired. Current research has primarily focused on catching user mistakes, such as errors or misused formulas. However, end users deal with issues other than just correctness. In particular, there are very few tools and very little research aimed at helping end-user programmers to find and fix performance issues. This thesis details three specific methods: detecting code smells, combining static code smell detection with profiling information, and the semi-automatic or tool-guided removal of code smells. These methods have been prototyped to interface with the Labview IDE with the support of National Instruments. These methods have been evaluated through several user studies to ensure that they are effective and helpful