Poster Slide on "A Domain Terms Visualization Tool for Spreadsheets"

 In this poster presentation, we introduce a new spreadsheet visualization tool which was developed to demonstrate that it is possible to have an easy-to-use spreadsheet understanding and debugging tool that relieves users from spreadsheet details and lets them utilize more of their mental model of the application domain. The tool translates traditional spreadsheet formulas into problem domain narratives and highlights referenced cells.

Full poster paper can be downloaded at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6883059

The poster was presented at the 2014 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC) which was held between 28th July, 2014 to 1st August, 2014 in Melbourne, Australia.

Presentation Slides on "Visualizing the Problem Domain for Spreadsheet Users: A Mental Model Perspective"

In this paper presentation, we introduce a new spreadsheet visualization tool as well as an empirical evaluation of its usability and of its effects on mental models of users. The tool translates traditional spreadsheet formulas into problem domain narratives and highlights referenced cells. The tool was found to be easy to learn and helped the participants to locate more errors in spreadsheets. Furthermore, the tool increased the use of the domain mental model in error descriptions and appeared to improve the mapping between the spreadsheet model and the domain model. Full paper can be downloaded at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6883040

The paper was presented at the 2014 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC) which was held between 28th July, 2014 to 1st August, 2014 in Melbourne, Australia.

Presentation Slides on "An Empirical Study of Spreadsheet Authors’ Mental Models in Explaining and Debugging Tasks"

The spreadsheet comprehension and debugging problem is still very much there. It is important to understand spreadsheet authors’ mental models when doing different spreadsheet process activities as it can help to understand why the spreadsheet process is so error-prone and it can also help to develop the right tools and techniques for spreadsheet activities. In the empirical study we conducted, we found that spreadsheet authors have at least three mental models: the real-world mental model, the domain mental model and the spreadsheet mental model. Full paper can be downloaded at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6645237

Presented at the VLHCC 2013 Conference in San Jose, California, USA  which took place from 15th to 19th September, 2013.