Supporting end-user debugging

Graduation date: 2007Although researchers have begun to explicitly support end-user programmers’ debugging by providing information to help them find bugs, there is little research addressing the right content to communicate to these users. The specific semantic content of these debugging communications matters because, if the users are not actually seeking the information the system is providing, they are not likely to attend to it. This thesis reports a formative empirical study that sheds light on what end users actually want to know in the course of debugging a spreadsheet, given the availability of a set of interactive visual testing and debugging features. Our results provide insights into end-user debuggers’ information gaps, and further suggest opportunities to improve end-user debugging systems’ support for the things end-user debuggers actually want to know. Following up on those suggestions, we then present the design and implementation of a solution aimed at helping to close some of those information gaps