Designing for Cognitive Diversity: Improving the GitHub Experience for Newcomers
Designing for Cognitive Diversity: Improving the GitHub Experience for Newcomers
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DOI：
10.1109/icse-seis58686.2023.00007
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发表时间：
2023-01
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影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Í. Santos;J. F. Pimentel;I. Wiese;Igor Steinmacher;A. Sarma;M. Gerosa
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作者：
Í. Santos;J. F. Pimentel;I. Wiese;Igor Steinmacher;A. Sarma;M. Gerosa
GitHub 等社交编码平台已成为协作编程和开源的事实上的环境。当这些平台不支持特定的认知方式时，它们就会为某些人群的编程造成障碍。研究表明，女性通常喜欢的认知方式往往得不到支持，这给女性新人造成了进入障碍。在本文中，我们使用 GenderMag 方法来评估 GitHub，以发现特定于认知风格的包容性错误。我们通过网络浏览器插件重新设计了“有缺陷的”GitHub 功能，并通过受试者间实验（n=75）对其进行了评估。我们的结果表明，界面的变化提高了用户的表现和自我效能，主要针对认知风格以女性更为常见的个体。我们的结果可以激励社交编码平台和软件工程工具的设计者创造更具包容性的开发环境。一般摘要——多样性是社会的一个重要方面。多样性的一种形式是认知多样性——认知风格的差异有助于产生多样化的思想。不幸的是，软件工具通常不支持不同的认知风格（例如学习风格），这对那些风格不受支持的人产生了不成比例的影响。这些人每次使用这些工具时都要缴纳认知“税”。在这项工作中，我们在社交编码平台 GitHub 中发现了“包容性错误”。然后我们重新设计了这些有缺陷的功能并与用户一起评估它们。我们的结果表明，重新设计使认知风格在原始设计中不受支持的群体变得更容易，该群体完成任务的百分比从 67% 上升到 95%。
Social coding platforms such as GitHub have become defacto environments for collaborative programming and open source. When these platforms do not support specific cognitive styles, they create barriers to programming for some populations. Research shows that the cognitive styles typically favored by women are often unsupported, creating barriers to entry for woman newcomers. In this paper, we use the GenderMag method to evaluate GitHub to find cognitive style-specific inclusivity bugs. We redesigned the "buggy" GitHub features through a web browser plugin, which we evaluated through a between-subjects experiment (n=75). Our results indicate that the changes to the interface improve users' performance and self-efficacy, mainly for individuals with cognitive styles more common to women. Our results can inspire designers of social coding platforms and software engineering tools to produce more inclusive development environments.General Abstract—Diversity is an important aspect of society. One form of diversity is cognitive diversity—differences in cognitive styles, which helps generate a diversity of thoughts. Unfortunately, software tools often do not support different cognitive styles (e.g., learning styles), disproportionately impacting those whose styles are not supported. These individuals pay a cognitive "tax" each time they use the tools. In this work, we found "inclusivity bugs" in GitHub, a social coding platform. We then redesigned these buggy features and evaluated them with users. Our results show that the redesign makes it easier for the group of individuals whose cognitive styles were unsupported in the original design, with the percentage of completed tasks rising from 67% to 95% for this group.