Joseph Lawrance, Ph.D.

32 Vassar St, Room G716

Cambridge, MA, 02139 USA
Web: http://joeylawrance.com
LinkedIn profile
Email: joey.lawrance@gmail.com

Overview

I earned my Ph.D. at Oregon State University, under the direction of Dr. Margaret Burnett. I was awarded an IBM Ph.D. Scholarship for my research on applying information foraging theory to debugging.

Curriculum Vitae (PDF)

Upcoming Events

PPIG 2010 September 19th - 21st, 2010. Madrid, Spain. Psychology of Programming Interest Group (co-chair).

Publications

Theses

Information Foraging in Debugging. Ph.D. Thesis. 2009.
How well do professional developers test with code coverage visualizations? An Empirical Study. Master's Thesis. 2005.

Journal Articles (Refereed)

Ko, A. J., Abraham, R., Beckwith, L., Blackwell, A., Burnett, M., Erwig, M., Lawrance, J., Lieberman, H., Myers, B., Rosson, M. B., Rothermel, G., Scaffidi, C., Shaw, M. and Wiedenbeck, S. The State of the Art in End-User Software Engineering, ACM Computing Surveys (To appear).
Dagit, J., Lawrance, J., Neumann, C., Burnett, M., Metoyer, R. and Adams, S. Using Cognitive Dimensions: Advice from the Trenches, Journal of Visual Languages and Computing, 17(4), 302-327, August 2006.
Robertson, T. J., Lawrance, J. and Burnett, M. Impact of High-Intensity Negotiated-Style Interruptions on End-User Debugging, Journal of Visual Languages and Computing, 17(2), 187-202, April 2006.

Full Conference Papers (Refereed)

Lawrance, J., Burnett, M., Bellamy, R., Bogart, C. and Swart, C. Reactive Information Foraging for Evolving Goals, ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2010), Atlanta, Georgia (To appear April 2010). (22% acceptance rate)
Lawrance, J., Bellamy, R., Burnett, M. and Rector, K. Can Information Foraging Pick the Fix? A Field Study, IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, September 2008, 57-64. (28.6% acceptance rate)
Lawrance, J., Bellamy, R., Burnett, M. and Rector, K. Using Information Scent to Model the Dynamic Foraging Behavior of Programmers in Maintenance Tasks, ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'08), Florence, Italy, April 2008, 1323-1332. (22% acceptance rate) (Best Paper Honorable Mention, awarded to 30 of the 714 submitted papers)
Lawrance, J., Bellamy, R., and Burnett, M. Scents in Programs: Does Information Foraging Theory Apply to Program Debugging? IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, Coeur d’Alène, Idaho, September 2007, 15-22. (32% acceptance rate)
Lawrance, J., Abraham, R., Burnett, M. and Erwig, M. Sharing Reasoning to Improve Fault Localization in Spreadsheets, IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, Brighton, United Kingdom, September 2006, 35-42. (25% acceptance rate)
Beckwith, L., Kissinger, C., Burnett, M., Wiedenbeck, S., Lawrance, J., Blackwell, A. and Cook, C. Tinkering and Gender in End-User Programmers' Debugging, ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'06), Montréal, Quebec, Canada, April 2006, 231-240. (23% acceptance rate)
Lawrance, J., Clarke, S., Burnett, M. and Rothermel, G. How well do professional developers test with code coverage visualizations? An empirical study, IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, Dallas, Texas, September 2005, 53-60. (31% acceptance rate)

Minor Papers

Burnett, M., Bogart, C., Cao, J., Grigoreanu, V., Kulesza, T. and Lawrance, J., End-user software engineering and distributed cognition, Proceedings of the 2009 ICSE Workshop on Software Engineering Foundations for End User Programming, May 2009, 1-7.
Lawrance, J., Bogart, C., Burnett, M., Bellamy, R., and Rector, K. How People Debug, Revisited: An Information Foraging Theory Perspective, IBM Technical Report RC24783, April 2009.
Lawrance, J. Using Programming by Demonstration to Reorganize User Interfaces, Graduate Student Consortium at IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human Centric Computing, Brighton, United Kingdom, September 2006, 238-239.
Lawrance, J., Burnett, M., Abraham, R. and Erwig, M. Toward Sharing Reasoning to Improve Fault Localization in Spreadsheets, 2nd Workshop on End User Software Engineering (WEUSE) at ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'06), Montréal, Quebec, Canada, April 2006.
Burnett M., Dagit, J., Lawrance, J., Beckwith, L. and Kissinger, C. Experiences with Cognitive Dimensions, Cognitive Dimensions of Notations 10th Anniversary Workshop at IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, Dallas, Texas, September 2005.
Lawrance, J., Clarke, S., Burnett, M. and Rothermel, G. How Well Do Professional Developers Test with Code Coverage Visualizations? An Empirical Study, Oregon State University Technical Report 2005-86, March 2005.

Under Review

Lawrance, J., Bogart, C., Burnett, M., Bellamy, R., Rector, K., How People Debug, Revisited: An Information Foraging Theory Perspective, Transactions on Software Engineering (submitted).
Scaffidi, C., Fleming, S., Piorkowski, D., Burnett, M., Bellamy, R., Lawrance, J. Unifying Software Engineering Methods and Tools: Principles and Patterns from Information Foraging Theory. Transactions on Software Engineering (submitted).

Education

Oregon State University, Ph.D. Computer Science. September 2003 - June 2009
Oregon State University, Master's of Science Computer Science. September 2003 - June 2005
Lawrence University, Bachelor of Arts Computer Science. September 1999 - June 2003

Experience

Research

Postdoctoral Associate, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA.
September 2009 - Present

Lead the continued development of cWeed, an end-user programming system for developing economic games to deploy on the web and on Amazon Mechanical Turk.
Intern, IBM Research, Hawthorne, NY.
June 2006 - November 2008

Investigated how information foraging theory can explain and predict programmers’ navigation through source code during debugging. As part of this work, I developed an Eclipse plug-in, conducted a seven month field study of programmer navigation behavior, conducted a think-aloud lab study of professional programmers, developed predictive information foraging models of programmer navigation, and conducted the statistical analysis of collected data.
Research Assistant, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR.
June 2005 - June 2009

In collaboration with IBM, investigated how information foraging theory can explain and predict the ways programmers navigate through source code during debugging, continuing the activities listed above. Conducted research aimed at understanding the needs of end users and assisting end-user programmers. As part of this work, I evaluated the user interface of an end-user application, analyzed data collected from studies of end user programmers conducted in a research spreadsheet environment, and led the development of a co-reasoning system that integrated multiple spreadsheet testing and fault-localization systems.
Intern, Microsoft, Redmond, WA.
January 2005 - March 2005

Designed, conducted, and analyzed data on a controlled think-aloud experiment of professional programmers to evaluate the effect of code coverage visualizations on software testing behavior.
Research Assistant, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR.
June 2004 - September 2004

Developed a Japanese-English cross-language Web-based information retrieval system (search engine) using Apache Lucene, for Tsunami research.

Teaching

Instructor, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR.
June 2008 - August 2008

Taught CS 261: Data Structures. Prepared curriculum, lectured, created and graded assignments and exams.
Teaching Assistant, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR.
March 2005 - June 2005

Graded assignments for CS 261: Data Structures. Instructor: Timothy A. Budd.
Teaching Assistant, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR.
September 2004 - December 2004

Led recitations, graded assignments and exams for CS 161: Introduction to Java. Instructor: Christine Wallace.
Content Tutor and Lab Assistant, Lawrence University, Appleton, WI.
April 2000 - June 2003

Tutored and assisted students enrolled in Computer Science, Calculus, and Statistics courses.

Professional

Intern, American Airlines Credit Union, Dallas, TX.
June 2003 - September 2003

Revised the corporate intranet.
Intern, American Airlines Credit Union, Dallas, TX.
June 2002 - September 2002

Created and deployed the corporate intranet site.
Web Developer, Lawrence University, Appleton, WI.
June 2001 - June 2003

Developed a web-based catering reservation & billing system and revised the public-facing web site.