We suggest a measure of initial learnability for programming languages based on Ausubel's Assimilation Theory. The measure is operationalized by asking a large number of programmer participants to compare pairs of expressions written in a known as well as an unknown programming language, and to comment on the differences. The value of the measure is the time needed for the participant to study the expressions before making comments. This measure of time is prior to the “time on task” that typically constitutes learnability measures. Due to the measure's novelty, our research plan involves a series of investigations to help establish validity from several perspectives.

One criterion that can be used to compare programming languages is learnability, or the ease with which a programming language can be learned by a programmer. Learnability has many aspects as well, such as mastery, change in performance over time, and initial learnability. This work examines a proposed measure of initial learnability that is based on the amount of time that a programmer needs to transfer his/her knowledge of one programming language to the understanding of another. The study design involves presenting human participants (who are programmers) with a sample of programming code written in a language that they know, alongside a sample of programming code implementing the same operations but in a language with which they are not familiar. The participant is then asked to examine the two samples of code, and then indicate when they feel that they are ready to reflect in writing on the differences and similarities between the familiar and the unfamiliar language. The proposed measure of initial learnability is the time it takes the participant to indicate that they are ready to proceed with the comparison. Repeating this procedure many times produces a series of learnability measures, each of which is connected to a pair of programming languages, i.e. each measurement characterizes the learnability of one programming language, given a subject's familiarity with another programming language. Because this approach is novel and not similar to other approaches tried in the past, we wish to gain some assurance of its validity before a full experiment. To do this, we plan to run a pre-experiment using this study design but with natural languages instead of programming languages. The data from this pre-experiment, if the approach is valid, will show that certain natural languages are easier to learn than others, given prior familiarity with similar languages. Because the notion of “similar” natural languages is well defined and documented, we can validate our data to make sure that it makes sense and is consistent with current knowledge of natural languages.

End-user software engineers often lack the training, tools, methodologies or other supports common to professional developers. Further, how and where they go for help is unknown. This paper presents results from an interview study where end-user programmer scientists relate, via storytelling, their help seeking behaviors. Our goal is to explore ways that the software engineering community can aid this population. We conducted interviews with seven scientists and two professional developers using storytelling prompts with follow-up questions. Results show that scientists prefer their human help to be proximal both physically and socially. Our analysis suggests that providing human help with specific characteristics, or providing tools and environments that support math-centric perspectives are two potential approaches to increasing the research efficiency of end-user programmer scientists.

Gesture-based touch screen user interfaces, when designed to be accessible to blind users, can be an effective mode of interaction for those users. However, current accessible touch screen interaction techniques suffer from one serious limitation: they are only usable on devices that have been explicitly designed to support them. Access Lens is a new interaction method that uses computer vision-based gesture tracking to enable blind people to use accessible gestures on paper documents and other physical objects, such as product packages, device screens, and home appliances. This paper describes the development of Access Lens hardware and software, the iterative design of Access Lens in collaboration with blind computer users, and opportunities for future development.

We present the evaluation of BrailleTouch, an accessible keyboard for blind users on touchscreen smartphones. Based on the standard Perkins Brailler, BrailleTouch implements a six-key chorded braille soft keyboard. Eleven blind participants typed for 165 twenty-minute sessions on three mobile devices: 1) BrailleTouch on a smartphone; 2) a soft braille keyboard on a touchscreen tablet; and 3) a commercial braille keyboard with physical keys. Expert blind users averaged 23.2 words per minute (wpm) on the BrailleTouch smartphone. The fastest participant, a touchscreen novice, achieved 32.1 wpm during his first session. Overall, participants were able to transfer their existing braille typing skills to a touchscreen device within an hour of practice. We report the speed for braille text entry on three mobile devices, an in depth error analysis, and the lessons learned for the design and evaluation of accessible and eyes-free soft keyboards.

Texting is the essence of mobile communication and connectivity, as evidenced by today's teenagers, tomorrow's workforce. Fifty-four percent of American teens contact each other daily by texting, as compared to face-to-face (33%) and talking on the phone (30%) according to the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project, 2010. Arguably, today's technologies support mobile text input poorly, primarily due to the size constraints of mobile devices. This is the case for everyone, but it is particularly relevant to the visually impaired. According to the World Health Organization, 284 million people are visually impaired worldwide. In order to connect these users to the global mobile community, we need to design effective and efficient methods for eyes-free text input on mobile devices. Furthermore, everyone would benefit from effective mobile texting for safety and speed. This design brief presents BrailleTouch, our working prototype solution for eyes-free mobile text input.