| [aspectj-users] mylar user study invitation |
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We have been running a large user study of the Mylar tool in order to determine how effective it is at reducing information overload in Eclipse. Mylar monitors programming activity, actively searches for related elements, and extends the Eclipse UI to focus on the elements of interest (http://eclipse.org/mylar). A key part of the study is the initial baseline phase which provides us with statistics about the views and commands that you use to navigate. It would be great to have both this and some Mylar usage statistics from people using AJDT, so that we can feed this data back into AJDT development. If you are interested in participating in the study please read the invitation below and make sure to sign up for the mylar-announce@xxxxxxxxxxx mailing list.
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If you have any trouble reading this email please view: http://eclipse.org/mylar/ubc-study.html
Mylar Preview Release User Study Invitation *We are happy to announce the v0.3 preview release of Mylar (http://eclipse.org/mylar). Mylar monitors programming activity and extends the Eclipse UI to focus on the elements of interest. This preview release is available to anyone willing to participate in a user study. You have been invited to participate because you previously expressed interest in Mylar. The study will help us validate, harden and improve the usability of the tool before we make it generally available from eclipse.org. Participating in this study will require minimal time from you, as it simply involves using Mylar for your daily work. You are free to stop using the tool at any time. To use Mylar you must running on a Java 5 VM and using Eclipse 3.1, do not install otherwise. As you work Mylar will monitor your interaction with Eclipse by logging the IDs of views that you use, editors that you work with, commands that you invoke, and preferences that you change. Mylar also generates statistics about the program elements that you edit and navigate, but removes any private information identifying those elements by obfuscating their names and paths. Approximately once every four days you will be asked to confirm an upload of this interaction log to a UBC server, will have the opportunity to review all of the information being sent, and to answer a short questionnaire. You will also have the option to remain anonymous throughout the study. The study is composed of three phases. After a sufficient amount of interaction data has been collected for each phase, around 10 days of 'typical' programming activity, you will be prompted to upgrade to the next phase. · Baseline: This will only track plain Eclipse usage to create a baseline (no Mylar features) · Study: Mylar features providing degree of interest facilities to standard Eclipse views, and predicted interest facilities and active versions of some standard Eclipse views To start Phase 0, use Eclipse's update manager to install the Mylar Monitor feature (Help menu -> Software Updates -> Find and Install -> Search for new features to install, then add the URL below Mylar as a New Remote Site called "Mylar phase0", click Finish, and proceed through the installation wizard): www.cs.ubc.ca/~mylar/alpha/baseline You are free to start the study anytime over the next two weeks, and if you would like to join later just let us know. If you experience any problems installing or using Mylar please submit a report, as we will be releasing frequent updates. To receive further announcements about the user study and future releases please sign up for the mylar-announce list. If you participate in the study we suggest that you sign up for the mylar-users list. If you have plans to develop or extend Mylar we ask that you wait until you have completed Phase 2, and sign up for the developer list after that point. If you have any other questions simply reply this email. Thanks and stay in touch, The Mylar Team * UBC Study title: Using Interaction History to Determine Interesting Information in a Development Environment. There are no known risks associated with this study. After the study, this interaction history will be stripped of all information identifying non-anonymous subjects, and we will use this data to determine what Mylar views are useful, and to determine whether Mylar makes it easier to work on large systems in Eclipse. We also plan on making this anonymous usage data available to other researchers interested in improving the IDE user experience. Please note that the data collected will be archived for future use. This data will be anonymous and not contain any identification information. This study is being conducted by Mik Kersten (beatmik-at-cs.ubc.ca) as a part of his PhD Thesis and supervised by Dr. Gail Murphy (murphy-at-cs.ubc.ca). If you have any questions about the data being collected or about the study in general please email us or call Mik Kersten at 604-822-0193.
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