From:
leah.findlater@xxxxxxxxx [mailto:leah.findlater@xxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Leah Findlater
Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2006
7:21 AM
To: Tim Wagner
Subject: Project Antoine
I'll be talking briefly tomorrow on the WTP PMC
telecon about Project Antoine, a research project in the Department of
Computer Science at the University of British Columbia (UBC) . The overall goal
of the project is to understand how we can effectively organize and
present commands in feature-rich user interfaces, such as the Eclipse WTP
user interface. As a first step in this research, we are planning to run a
study to collect and analyze usage data for Eclipse WTP. Our hope is that the findings
from this project will also be beneficial to the Eclipse WTP development
team, and we plan to share the results for this purpose.
If you have any questions or comments, please feel
free to contact me. I've also included a copy of the study FAQ below, which is
taken from the project website ( http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~lkf/antoine).
Leah Findlater
Email: lkf@xxxxxxxxx
Phone: 604-827-3988
Usage Study FAQ
Who can participate?
To participate in this study you must be a
user of Eclipse WTP, currently using the IDE for at least 1 hour per week.
What does the study involve?
The study involves installing the Mylar usage monitor, then using Eclipse
WTP for your
daily work and periodically sending back usage statistics that are collected by
the monitor. Your only time commitment to the study will be to fill out a short
questionnaire and use our automated facility for transmitting usage data. This
should take approximately 10 minutes per week. We ask that you keep the monitor
installed for at least one month in order to get a record of longer-term usage
patterns.
The monitor records edits and navigations but does not record identifying
information about you or the system you are working on (more detail below). If
you choose to you can remain anonymous throughout the study by not providing
any personal information and only using a randomly-generated ID to sign up. You
are free to stop participating in the study at any time.
How can you participate?
The monitor plugin will be available for download after the study
start date. To receive a notification email when the study start date is set,
please contact Leah Findlater ( lkf-at-cs.ubc.ca) to sign up. No additional information
about you is required -- just your email address, so that we can contact you.
We have extended the Mylar monitor plugin for this study. Mylar
is an Eclipse Technology Project and its usage
monitor component may be used independently for wider data collection purposes.
Who is running this study?
This study is being conducted by Leah Findlater ( lkf-at-cs.ubc.ca ) as a
part of her PhD thesis and is supervised by Dr. Joanna McGrenere ( joanna-at-cs.ubc.ca ).
The study is being funded by IBM
Centers for Advanced Studies and by the Natural Sciences and
Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) .
What data is logged?
A log of your interaction history is collected. The log stores
information about the program elements that you edit and navigate, but does not
contain identifiable information about specific elements ( e.g. the fact that
you've navigated to a Java project is stored, but the specific name of that
project is not recorded). No identifying information about you or about the
system on which you are working is recorded or transmitted with the usage data.
In addition, the views that you use to navigate and edit are recorded. When
submitting the information you may be prompted to answer a very short
questionnaire, and can choose whether or not to do so. You will also have the
option of viewing the information that will be transmitted and aborting the
transmission.
After the study, the usage data will be stripped of all information identifying
the participants, and we will use this data to determine what usage patterns
exist across users and how we can use this to improve the organization of
commands and functions in feature-rich user interfaces. Please note that the
stripped usage data, containing no identification information, will be archived
for future use, and may be made available to other researchers interested in
improving the IDE user experience.
