CAREER: Empowering Software Engineering with Eye Tracking

本研究项目的目的是通过使用眼动仪对大型软件系统进行实证研究，提高对开发人员活动的了解。在软件工程中进行的大多数眼动追踪研究都使用软件工件的小片段，例如以图像或文本形式显示的源代码。由于软件工件长达数百行，使用各种软件工件进行实际的研究是不实际的。为了解决这个问题，本研究将开发一个强大的基础设施，使隐式眼动追踪在开发人员的工作环境中，从而支持在大文件上的固有滚动，并自动链接眼睛注视的工件元素。这种基础设施将推动软件工程中进行眼动追踪研究的最新技术。建议的研究将导致发明、评估和应用创新的方法和工具，这些方法和工具使用开发人员的眼睛来支持软件工程任务中的开发人员，例如代码摘要、代码建议和软件可追溯性。横切这三个主要方向的其他活动与使用眼动追踪作为基准和标准化视觉努力指标有关。这项工作的广泛影响包括开发教育课程内容，增加对代表性不足的本科生群体的指导，开发开源软件，生产大型眼动追踪数据集，以及与行业合作评估和验证拟议的研究。教育活动还包括一个强大的K-12扩展计划，鼓励学生追求计算机事业。

The objective of this research project is to advance knowledge of developer activity by conducting empirical studies on large software systems using an eye tracker. Most eye tracking studies done in software engineering use small snippets of software artifacts such as source code that are shown as images or text. With software artifacts being hundreds of lines long, doing realistic studies using a variety of software artifacts is not practical. To address this problem, this research will develop a robust infrastructure that enables implicit eye tracking within the working environment of the developer thereby supporting inherent scrolling on large files and automating the linking of eye gaze to artifact elements looked at. This infrastructure will advance the state of the art in conducting eye tracking studies in software engineering.The proposed research will lead to inventing, evaluating, and applying innovative methods and tools that use developer eye gaze to support the developer in software engineering tasks such as code summarization, code recommendations, and software traceability. Additional activities that crosscut these three main directions are related to using eye tracking as a benchmark and standardizing visual effort metrics. The broader impacts of this work include developing educational course content, increased mentoring of underrepresented undergraduate student groups, developing open source software, producing large eye tracking datasets, and collaborating with industry for assessment and validation of the proposed research. Educational activities also include a strong K-12 outreach program to encourage students to pursue a career in computing.