Mercury: Empowering programmers' mobile work practices with microproductivity

Alex C. Williams; Harmanpreet Kaur; Shamsi Iqbal; Ryen W. White; Jaime Teevan; Adam Fourney

doi:10.1145/3332165.3347932

Mercury: Empowering programmers' mobile work practices with microproductivity

Alex C. Williams, Harmanpreet Kaur, Shamsi Iqbal, Ryen W. White, Jaime Teevan, Adam Fourney

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

19 Scopus citations

Abstract

There has been considerable research on how software can enhance programmers' productivity within their workspace. In this paper, we instead explore how software might help programmers make productive use of their time while away from their workspace. We interviewed 10 software engineers and surveyed 78 others and found that while programmers often do work while mobile, their existing mobile work practices are primarily exploratory (e.g., capturing thoughts or performing online research). In contrast, they want to be doing work that is more grounded in their existing code (e.g., code review or bug triage). Based on these findings, we introduce Mercury, a system that guides programmers in making progress on-the-go with auto-generated microtasks derived from their source code's current state. A study of Mercury with 20 programmers revealed that they could make meaningful progress with Mercury while mobile with little effort or attention. Our findings suggest an opportunity exists to support the continuation of programming tasks across devices and help programmers resume coding upon returning to their workspace.

Original language	English (US)
Title of host publication	UIST 2019 - Proceedings of the 32nd Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery, Inc
Pages	81-94
Number of pages	14
ISBN (Electronic)	9781450368162
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/3332165.3347932
State	Published - Oct 17 2019
Externally published	Yes
Event	32nd Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, UIST 2019 - New Orleans, United States Duration: Oct 20 2019 → Oct 23 2019

Publication series

Name	UIST 2019 - Proceedings of the 32nd Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology

Conference

Conference	32nd Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, UIST 2019
Country/Territory	United States
City	New Orleans
Period	10/20/19 → 10/23/19

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Association for Computing Machinery.

Keywords

Continuation
Interruption
Microtask
Mobile
Programming

Publisher link

10.1145/3332165.3347932

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Cite this

Williams, A. C., Kaur, H., Iqbal, S., White, R. W., Teevan, J., & Fourney, A. (2019). Mercury: Empowering programmers' mobile work practices with microproductivity. In UIST 2019 - Proceedings of the 32nd Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (pp. 81-94). (UIST 2019 - Proceedings of the 32nd Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology). Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. https://doi.org/10.1145/3332165.3347932

Mercury: Empowering programmers' mobile work practices with microproductivity. / Williams, Alex C.; Kaur, Harmanpreet; Iqbal, Shamsi et al.
UIST 2019 - Proceedings of the 32nd Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology. Association for Computing Machinery, Inc, 2019. p. 81-94 (UIST 2019 - Proceedings of the 32nd Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

Williams, AC, Kaur, H, Iqbal, S, White, RW, Teevan, J & Fourney, A 2019, Mercury: Empowering programmers' mobile work practices with microproductivity. in UIST 2019 - Proceedings of the 32nd Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology. UIST 2019 - Proceedings of the 32nd Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, Association for Computing Machinery, Inc, pp. 81-94, 32nd Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, UIST 2019, New Orleans, United States, 10/20/19. https://doi.org/10.1145/3332165.3347932

Williams AC, Kaur H, Iqbal S, White RW, Teevan J, Fourney A. Mercury: Empowering programmers' mobile work practices with microproductivity. In UIST 2019 - Proceedings of the 32nd Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology. Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. 2019. p. 81-94. (UIST 2019 - Proceedings of the 32nd Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology). doi: 10.1145/3332165.3347932

Williams, Alex C. ; Kaur, Harmanpreet ; Iqbal, Shamsi et al. / Mercury : Empowering programmers' mobile work practices with microproductivity. UIST 2019 - Proceedings of the 32nd Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology. Association for Computing Machinery, Inc, 2019. pp. 81-94 (UIST 2019 - Proceedings of the 32nd Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology).

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Mercury: Empowering programmers' mobile work practices with microproductivity

Abstract

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Bibliographical note

Keywords

Publisher link

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