Abstract: Our group has had a longstanding design intuition that a stable, spatial representation of code could benefit software developers. A code "map" could help a developer stay oriented in code, see relationships and other overlays, and provide a common artifact to anchor developers' conversations. We have done a series of tools and studies around the idea. I will describe these systems, highlighting our understanding of spatial code has evolved, and finish with a demo of Code Canvas, our latest prototype.

About the Speaker: Gina Venolia is a senior researcher with Microsoft Research in the Human Interactions of Programming group. Her research focuses on understanding how knowledge flows among people and building systems to make it flow more freely. She is currently studying collocated and geographically-distributed software development teams, building tools that help developers find and communicate about the knowledge behind the code, and developing systems that exploit spatial memory to support navigation, team awareness, and communication about code.

About NPUC 2009: Software development and design has evolved from an arcane art practiced with exotic, obscure tools into a multi-billion dollar industry based on even more exotic and obscure tools. Given the advances that have been made in user interface technology and design processes, shouldn't we be able to create a better user experience for design and development?


At NPUC 2009, IBM Research - Almaden brought together innovators in academia and industry who are leading the way to a more natural, accessible, and social design and software development process . They explored how to help improve the productivity of current programmers and make creating software more accessible to a larger and more diverse population than ever before.