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HONORS 499: INDEPENDENT RESEARCH

THIRTY-TWO YEARS OF SOFTWARE PROBLEMS IN THE NEWS

SUMMER QUARTER 2012

INSTRUCTOR

Faculty Sponsor: Andrew J. Ko, PhDHours: By Appointment

Office: Mary Gates Hall 330G

Phone: (206) 221-0352

Website: http://faculty.washington.edu/ajko/

HONORS 499

A student can obtain Independent Research credits (typically designated as "499")

through a number of departments, including Honors. These credits can be graded, or

taken as credit/no credit. The credits must be graded to count towards the Honors

Core requirements.

ABOUT THE LAB

The USE Research Group at the University of Washington comprises Ph.D. students

working with Dr. Andrew J. Ko on topics at the intersection of Human-Computer

Interaction (HCI) and Software Engineering. We are active members of the DUB

group, a cross-campus human-computer interaction research coalition. We study

human aspects of software development, inventing software development

technologies that enable software teams to be more user-centered. We explore the

full range of software design activities, including design, development, bug

reporting, bug triage, issue tracking, technical support, help systems, debugging,

usability engineering, and end-user programming. More information about the USE

Research Group can be found online at http://usegroup.ischool.uw.edu/.

COURSE OVERVIEW

This course has an applied focus and gives students research skills they can use in

scientific settings to answer questions and make discoveries relevant to the

development of information technology products and services. The field of Human-

Computer Interaction (HCI) will provide the backdrop for the course, although the

concepts will easily translate to other areas of Informatics. Most of the research

methods used in HCI are borrowed from psychology, anthropology, sociology, and

education, as well as the hard sciences and engineering.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES1. Completing an end-to-end research process (including defining a research

problem, designing research protocol, collecting and analyzing data, and

presenting findings)

2. Using technology to support the research process

3. Using an agile approach to carrying out the research process

4 Evaluating the quality of research that is carried out by himself or herself and

other researchers

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INTRODUCTION

Software has changed the lives of nearly every person on our planet. Not only does it

impact people directly, by providing them access to information about the world,

connecting them with people at work and home, but it also underlies most of the

infrastructure of human civilization, driving trade, facilitating transportation, and

automating much of the tedious work behind manufacturing, entertainment,accounting, and even medicine.

When software works as intended, its benefits can be quite powerful, improving our

efficiency, our abilities, and our behavior. Unfortunately, software rarely does

exactly what its designers intend or what its users expect. And when software fails

to meet our expectations, it can be annoying, frustrating, confusing, and even dire,

costing human lives and disrupting modern civilization. Moreover, catastrophic

failures such as these are likely only a small fraction of the many smaller ways in

which software failures disrupt human activity.

Aside from these notable failures such as these, we actually know quite little aboutthe effect of software failures on society, both big and small. What kinds of failures

are occurring that people find consequential? Who are they affecting? And as

software has become more pervasive, are failures more common and of greater

consequence?

These questions are important for several reasons. In academia, entire fields are

dedicated to eliminating specific kinds of software failures. In Software Engineering,

researchers spend the vast majority of their time inventing ways of preventing

crashes, hangs, and security defects and in HCI, researchers have primarily focused

on usability and learnability. And yet there are many other ways in which software

may be failing that may deserve more attention by researchers. Beyond academia,investigating the effect of software failures on society over time may give us a

glimpse into the kinds of software failures to expect in the future, helping society to

better prepare for them and better prevent them.

Because software failures are pervasive, there are few straightforward or direct

ways to study their effect on society, or even to observe them. Moreover, what

constitutes a failure is not straightforward. A software program may behave in a

way that is undesirable to someone using it, but the behavior may have been

intentional on the part of the designer. Moreover, in most cases the only observable

phenomenon is the failure itself, and not its root cause. Root cause analysis on

failures is little different than debugging the failure itself, which is well known to beone of the most difficult and time consuming parts of software engineering.

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DELIVERABLES

Students are assessed on their timely completion of class deliverables.

Research Seminar Reflections

Every Wednesday, the Design Use Build (DUB) group hosts a seminar on

current topics of human-computer interaction research. Students are to keepa log of their reflections of each seminar and their relevance to HCI research.

June 20, 2012

Harshvardhan Vathsangam (University of Southern California)

Sense and Sensibility: Statistical Techniques for Human Body Sensing

using Inertial Sensors.

June 27, 2012

Jacob Wobbrock (University of Washington iSchool)

From Plastic to Pixels: In Pursuit of Effective Touch-Typing on Touch

Screens

July 11, 2012Jeffrey Bigham (University of Rochester Computer Science)

Real-Time Collaborative Planning with the Crowd

July 18, 2012

Adrienne Andrew (University of Washington CSE)

Mobile Phones for Dietary Intake Tracking

August 1, 212

Melissa Clarkson (UW Biomedical and Health Informatics)

Semantic Web in Biomedicine

August 15, 2012

Matthew Kay (UW CSE) & Eun Kyoung Choe (UW iSchool)

Lullaby: A Capture & Access System for Understanding the SleepEnvironment

Daily Lab Assignments

Attendance is very important for doing well in the course. Students will be

assigned daily lab tasks from the instructor, including web scripting, data

collection and analysis, and detailed record keeping. Quick scrum meetings

take place at 10 am every morning. These meetings are short15 minutes or

lessand primarily focus on 1) what you got done yesterday, 2) what you're

going to work on today, and 3) what you've finished since yesterday.

Research ProjectStudents will work closely alongside the instructor to layout their proposed

research project contribution. More details about the research project will be

discussed thoroughly in class.

COMPUTER ACCESS

Use of a personal computer or laptop is necessary for this course. The Information

School operates the TE Lab located in Room 440 of Mary Gates Hall.

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GRADING

This is a 5-credit undergraduate interdisciplinary research course.

Deliverable Points Deadline

Research Seminar Logs 2.5 End of Each WeekMaximum of 6 Seminars 15 Total

Daily Lab Assignments 1 Following Morning

Maximum of 35 Points 35 Total

One-Page Research Reflection 15 End of Term

Maximum 15 Points 15 Total

Research Project 35 End of Term

Maximum of 35 Points 35 Total

The 100 points above will be converted to grade points with the following formula:

Grade Point = truncateToTenths ((total points - 60) x 0.089 + 0.7)

The score is truncated to the nearest tenth; for example, a 96.75 is truncated to a 96,

even though it is closer to 97. This formula produces this mapping:

Total Grade Point

97 points 4.0

86 points 3.075 points 2.0

63 points 1.0

60 points 0.7

59 points 0.0

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY

University policy defines "cheating" as "the practice of fraudulent and deceptive acts

for the purpose of improving a grade or obtaining course credit." University policy

defines "plagiarism" as "a specific form of cheating which consists of the misuse of

the published and/or unpublished words of another by representing the material so

used as one's own work." Cheating and plagiarism will not be tolerated in thiscourse. All cases of suspected misconduct will be forwarded to the UW committee

on student conduct.

STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES

If you are a disabled student, be sure to identify yourself to the University and the

instructor so that reasonable accommodation for learning and evaluation within the

course can be made.