Gazing at Code Review(s)

Period: approx. Aug 2020 - July 2022
Funding: ELLIIT pre-project
PI: Emma Söderberg, Lund University.
co-PI: Luke Church, Lund University | University of Cambridge.
co-PI: Diederick Niehorster, Humanities Lab, Lund University.
co-PI: Marcus Nyström, Humanities Lab, Lund University.
co-PI: Johanna Persson, Dept. of Design Science, Lund University.
co-PI: Christofer Rydenfält, Dept. of Design Sciences, Lund University.
co-PI: Christoph Reichenbach, Dept. of Computer Science, Lund University.
co-PI: Jürgen Börstler, Dept. of Software Engineering, BTH.
Research assistant (2021): Hedda Klintskog, Lund University.
Research assistant (2021): Olivia Mattsson, Lund University.
Research assistant (2022-2023): William Saranpää, Lund University.
Research assistant (2022-2023): Felix Apell Skjutar, Lund University.


Brief Description

Modern code review, where developers use tools to review code diffs to improve quality and build shared understanding, has gained wide-spread adoption in industry. Consequently, developers are spending a lot of time trying to understand and review other developers' code. Given the limited supply of (expensive) engineers there is much to be gained from simplifying this task. Progress in the area of eye-tracking (measuring what engineers look at and in what order) has opened up the possibility of providing developer tools that can adapt to the current needs of a developer in a specific context. Using eye-tracking, we aim to study modern code review and to investigate how intelligent assistance, driven by eye-tracking, may assist developers during this activity. This project proposal is aimed at the ELLIIT focus theme ‘next-generation software technology’ (theme C) and is a cross-disciplinary collaboration between Computer Science, Software Engineering, Design Sciences, and Psychology at LU and BTH.