Swarthmore College Department of Computer Science

Talk by Marian Petre, Centre for Research in Computing, The Open University

Expert Software Designers: How They Imagine and Visualize Software
Wednesday, March 29 2006
4:30pm in Science Center 240
Co-sponsored by the Computer Science Department and the Cognitive Science Program

Abstract

What do expert software developers experience "in their minds" when they're reasoning about complex software? To what extent do the design tools they build for themselves reflect their mental imagery? What sorts of visualization tools do experts build, and what do they want to use them for?

This talk discusses empirical investigations organized around four topics:

  • expert programmers' mental imagery
  • how experts communicate their mental imagery
  • what experts make of other people's visualization tools
  • what visualization tools experts build for themselves

One of the distinctive features of experts' own visualization tools is their embodiment of domain knowledge.