End-user software visualizations for fault localization

Abstract

End-user programming has become the most common form of programming today. However, despite this growth, there has been little investigation into bringing the benefits of software visualization to end-user programmers. Evidence from the spreadsheet paradigm, probably the most widely used end-user environment, reveals that end users' programs often contain faults. We would like to integrate software visualization into these end-user environments to help end users deal with the reliability issues in their programs. Towards this end, we have devised several fault localization visualization techniques for spreadsheets. This paper describes these techniques and reports the results of a formative study---using tests created by end users---to investigate how these fault localization techniques compare. Our results reveal some strengths and weaknesses of each technique, and provide insights into the cost-effectiveness of each technique for the interactive world of end-user spreadsheet development.