Eclipse as a platform for research on interruption management in software development

Automated tools for mediating incoming interruptions are necessary in order to balance the concentration required for software development with the need to collaborate and absorb information. At present, there is no design knowledge for building such tools for programmers. The abundant literature on the general problem of interruptions and awareness does not address the unique characteristics of software development, and the few studies which do are restricted to simplified tasks or environments. We attribute this scarcity to difficulties in conducting empirical studies in real settings, because of the need to implement appropriate research tools. Eclipse is poised as an ideal platform for such research thanks to its popularity, plug-in model, and observation hooks. This paper presents GateKeeper, a plug-in based framework for managing interruptions, allowing the rapid implementation of different interruption and awareness models, and their integration within actual collaboration to...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: ECLIPSE
• Authors: Uri Dekel, Steven Ross
• Keywords: Collaboration Tool, ECLIPSE 2004, Incoming Interruptions, Software Development