Project


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I am excited to be working with Professor Mary Beth Rosson in the Information Science and Technology (IST) Department of Pennsylvania State University. Professor Rosson's area of expertise (and the area of my summer research) is Human Computer Interaction (HCI).

End User Debugging of Web Applications

I am conducting a “think aloud” study to investigate approaches end users take in debugging web applications. Insight gained through the study will contribute to developing tools and methodologies to better support end users creating web applications.

My project procedure
  1. Design a web site in Microsoft FrontPage 2003 that represents a realistic web site with bugs.
    View web site architecture. View table of web site bugs.
    • FrontPage 2003 was chosen because it is a web application development tool commonly used by end users.
  2. Develop a scenario for study participants in which they are hired to improve and fix the web site and are given specific enhancement tasks. View scenario.
  3. Read previous research in this area – what work has been done and what were the results.
    • Step 3 would be number 1 if I had not been given the project by someone who already knew what had been done in this area.
    • My summary of previos research can be found in the "Related Work" section of my "Final Report". To view a small research paper describing a classification framework for web application errors click here.
  4. Recruit study participants who use Front Page to develop web sites but have no formal programming training.
  5. Administer “think aloud” study. Take notes and use screen recording software to capture participants’ input and mouse movements.
  6. Analyze collected data in order to form characterizations of end user debugging strategies.
  7. Present results in a paper.