HONORS 499: INDEPENDENT RESEARCH THIRTY-TWO YEARS OF SOFTWARE PROBLEMS IN THE NEWS SUMMER QUARTER 2012 INSTRUCTOR Faculty

Sponsor: Andrew J. Ko, PhD Hours: By Appointment Office: Mary Gates Hall 330G Phone: (206) 221-0352 Website: http://faculty.washington.edu/ajko/ HONORS 499 A student can obtain Independent Research credits (typically designated as "499") through a number of departments, including Honors. These credits can be graded, or taken as credit/no credit. The credits must be graded to count towards the Honors Core requirements. ABOUT THE LAB The USE Research Group at the University of Washington comprises Ph.D. students working with Dr. Andrew J. Ko on topics at the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Software Engineering. We are active members of the DUB group, a cross-campus human-computer interaction research coalition. We study human aspects of software development, inventing software development technologies that enable software teams to be more user-centered. We explore the full range of software design activities, including design, development, bug reporting, bug triage, issue tracking, technical support, help systems, debugging, usability engineering, and end-user programming. More information about the USE Research Group can be found online at http://usegroup.ischool.uw.edu/. COURSE OVERVIEW This course has an applied focus and gives students research skills they can use in scientific settings to answer questions and make discoveries relevant to the development of information technology products and services. The field of HumanComputer Interaction (HCI) will provide the backdrop for the course, although the concepts will easily translate to other areas of Informatics. Most of the research methods used in HCI are borrowed from psychology, anthropology, sociology, and education, as well as the hard sciences and engineering. LEARNING OBJECTIVES 1. Completing an end-to-end research process (including defining a research problem, designing research protocol, collecting and analyzing data, and presenting findings) 2. Using technology to support the research process 3. Using an agile approach to carrying out the research process 4 Evaluating the quality of research that is carried out by himself or herself and other researchers

INTRODUCTION Software has changed the lives of nearly every person on our planet. Not only does it impact people directly, by providing them access to information about the world, connecting them with people at work and home, but it also underlies most of the infrastructure of human civilization, driving trade, facilitating transportation, and automating much of the tedious work behind manufacturing, entertainment, accounting, and even medicine. When software works as intended, its benefits can be quite powerful, improving our efficiency, our abilities, and our behavior. Unfortunately, software rarely does exactly what its designers intend or what its users expect. And when software fails to meet our expectations, it can be annoying, frustrating, confusing, and even dire, costing human lives and disrupting modern civilization. Moreover, catastrophic failures such as these are likely only a small fraction of the many smaller ways in which software failures disrupt human activity. Aside from these notable failures such as these, we actually know quite little about the effect of software failures on society, both big and small. What kinds of failures are occurring that people find consequential? Who are they affecting? And as software has become more pervasive, are failures more common and of greater consequence? These questions are important for several reasons. In academia, entire fields are dedicated to eliminating specific kinds of software failures. In Software Engineering, researchers spend the vast majority of their time inventing ways of preventing crashes, hangs, and security defects and in HCI, researchers have primarily focused on usability and learnability. And yet there are many other ways in which software may be failing that may deserve more attention by researchers. Beyond academia, investigating the effect of software failures on society over time may give us a glimpse into the kinds of software failures to expect in the future, helping society to better prepare for them and better prevent them. Because software failures are pervasive, there are few straightforward or direct ways to study their effect on society, or even to observe them. Moreover, what constitutes a failure is not straightforward. A software program may behave in a way that is undesirable to someone using it, but the behavior may have been intentional on the part of the designer. Moreover, in most cases the only observable phenomenon is the failure itself, and not its root cause. Root cause analysis on failures is little different than debugging the failure itself, which is well known to be one of the most difficult and time consuming parts of software engineering.

DELIVERABLES Students are assessed on their timely completion of class deliverables. Research Seminar Reflections Every Wednesday, the Design Use Build (DUB) group hosts a seminar on current topics of human-computer interaction research. Students are to keep a log of their reflections of each seminar and their relevance to HCI research. June 20, 2012 Harshvardhan Vathsangam (University of Southern California) Sense and Sensibility: Statistical Techniques for Human Body Sensing using Inertial Sensors. June 27, 2012 Jacob Wobbrock (University of Washington iSchool) From Plastic to Pixels: In Pursuit of Effective Touch-Typing on Touch Screens July 11, 2012 Jeffrey Bigham (University of Rochester Computer Science) Real-Time Collaborative Planning with the Crowd July 18, 2012 Adrienne Andrew (University of Washington CSE) Mobile Phones for Dietary Intake Tracking August 1, 212 Melissa Clarkson (UW Biomedical and Health Informatics) Semantic Web in Biomedicine August 15, 2012 Matthew Kay (UW CSE) & Eun Kyoung Choe (UW iSchool) Lullaby: A Capture & Access System for Understanding the Sleep Environment Daily Lab Assignments Attendance is very important for doing well in the course. Students will be assigned daily lab tasks from the instructor, including web scripting, data collection and analysis, and detailed record keeping. Quick scrum meetings take place at 10 am every morning. These meetings are short15 minutes or lessand primarily focus on 1) what you got done yesterday, 2) what you're going to work on today, and 3) what you've finished since yesterday. Research Project Students will work closely alongside the instructor to layout their proposed research project contribution. More details about the research project will be discussed thoroughly in class. COMPUTER ACCESS Use of a personal computer or laptop is necessary for this course. The Information School operates the TE Lab located in Room 440 of Mary Gates Hall.

GRADING This is a 5-credit undergraduate interdisciplinary research course. Deliverable Research Seminar Logs Maximum of 6 Seminars Daily Lab Assignments Maximum of 35 Points One-Page Research Reflection Maximum 15 Points Research Project Maximum of 35 Points Points 2.5 15 Total 1 35 Total 15 15 Total 35 35 Total Deadline End of Each Week Following Morning End of Term End of Term

The 100 points above will be converted to grade points with the following formula: Grade Point = truncateToTenths ((total points - 60) x 0.089 + 0.7) The score is truncated to the nearest tenth; for example, a 96.75 is truncated to a 96, even though it is closer to 97. This formula produces this mapping: Total 97 points 86 points 75 points 63 points 60 points 59 points Grade Point 4.0 3.0 2.0 1.0 0.7 0.0

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY University policy defines "cheating" as "the practice of fraudulent and deceptive acts for the purpose of improving a grade or obtaining course credit." University policy defines "plagiarism" as "a specific form of cheating which consists of the misuse of the published and/or unpublished words of another by representing the material so used as one's own work." Cheating and plagiarism will not be tolerated in this course. All cases of suspected misconduct will be forwarded to the UW committee on student conduct. STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES If you are a disabled student, be sure to identify yourself to the University and the instructor so that reasonable accommodation for learning and evaluation within the course can be made.