Wandercode: An Interaction Design for Code Recommenders to Reduce Information Overload, Ease Exploration, and Save Screen Space

TL;DR

Wandercode introduces a new interaction design for code recommenders that reduces information overload, supports better exploration, and optimizes screen space, validated through user testing in a code editor extension.

Contribution

The paper presents Wandercode, a novel graph-based interaction design for code recommenders, along with a set of design dimensions to guide future development.

Findings

Wandercode enabled faster task completion.

It reduced users' cognitive load.

Participants viewed Wandercode more favorably.

Abstract

In this paper, we present Wandercode, a novel interaction design for recommender systems that recommend code locations to aid programmers in software development tasks. In particular, our design aims to improve upon prior designs by reducing information overload, by better supporting the exploration of recommendations, and by making more efficient use of screen space. During our design process, we developed a set of design dimensions to aid others in the design of code recommenders. To validate our design, we implemented a prototype of our design as an Atom code editor extension with support for the Java programming language, and conducted an empirical user evaluation comparing our graph-based Wandercode design to a control design representative of prior list-based interaction designs for code recommenders. The results showed that, compared with the control design, Wandercode helped participants complete tasks more quickly, reduced their cognitive load, and was viewed more favorably by participants.