In this paper we consider human factors and their impact on spreadsheet development in strategic decision-making. This paper brings forward research from many disciplines both directly related to spreadsheets and a broader spectrum from psychology to industrial processing. We investigate how human factors affect a simplified development cycle and what the potential consequences are.
We intend to demonstrate the innate problems with existing spreadsheet products and to show how to tackle these issues using a new type of spreadsheet program called Resolver. It addresses the issues head-on and thereby moves the 1980's "VisiCalc paradigm" on to match the advances in computer languages and user requirements. Continuous display of the spreadsheet grid and the equivalent computer program, together with the ability to interact and add code through either interface, provides a number of new methodologies for spreadsheet development.
Few major commercial or economic decisions are made today which are not underpinned by analysis using spreadsheets. It is virtually impossible to avoid making mistakes during their drafting and some of these errors remain, unseen and uncorrected, until something turns the spotlight on them. By then it may be too late. The challenge is to find a way of creating spreadsheets which will preserve the benefit of their power and flexibility while making their creation more transparent and safer. Full documentation and documented version and quality control, section by section, of the eventual spread…
Developments in Mobile Computing are putting pressure on the software industry to research new modes of interaction that do not rely on the traditional keyboard and mouse combination. Computer users suffering from Repetitive Strain Injury also seek an alternative to keyboard and mouse devices to reduce suffering in wrist and finger joints. Voice-control is an alternative approach to spreadsheet development and debugging that has been researched and used successfully in other domains. While voice-control technology for spreadsheets is available its effectiveness has not been investigated. This …
Past research shows that spreadsheet models are prone to such a high frequency of errors and data security implications that the risk management of spreadsheet development and spreadsheet use is of great importance to both industry and academia. The underlying rationale for this paper is that spreadsheet training courses should specifically address risk management in the development process both from a generic and a domain-specific viewpoint. This research specifically focuses on one of these namely those generic issues of risk management that should be present in a training course that attemp…
A common application of spreadsheets is the development of models that deliver projections of the future financial statements of companies established to pursue ventures that are subject to project financing. A survey of 11 such spreadsheets prepared by a range of organisations shows that the amount of self-testing included in such models ranges between one formula of testing for each three formulae of calculation, down to essentially no self-testing at all.
Visualisation is often presented as a means of simplifying information and helping people understand complex data. In this paper we describe the design, development and evaluation of an interactive visualisation for spreadsheet formulae (EQUS). The work is justified on the grounds that these are widely used tools for significant numerical processing and modeling, yet the formula developed can be easily misunderstood. The development process was one of iterative refinement engaging an initial target audience of mid-teen learners, involving re-design and formative evaluation. The resulting visua…
Modern conversational agents such as Alexa and Google Assistant represent significant progress in speech recognition, natural language processing, and speech synthesis. But as these agents have grown more realistic, concerns have been raised over how their social nature might unconsciously shape our interactions with them. Through a survey of 500 voice assistant users, we explore whether users' relationships with their voice assistants can be quantified using the same metrics as social, interpersonal relationships; as well as if this correlates with how much they trust their devices and the ex…
Homomorphic encryption, secure multi-party computation, and differential privacy are part of an emerging class of Privacy Enhancing Technologies which share a common promise: to preserve privacy whilst also obtaining the benefits of computational analysis. Due to their relative novelty, complexity, and opacity, these technologies provoke a variety of novel questions for design and governance. We interviewed researchers, developers, industry leaders, policymakers, and designers involved in their deployment to explore motivations, expectations, perceived opportunities and barriers to adoption. T…
In this paper, we report the development of a model and a proof-of-concept visual text analytics (VTA) tool to enhance documentdiscovery in a problem-driven visualization research (PDVR) con-text. The proposed model captures the cognitive model followed bydomain and visualization experts by analyzing the interdisciplinarycommunication channel as represented by keywords found in twodisjoint collections of research papers. High distributional inter-collection similarities are employed to build informative keywordassociations that serve as entry points to drive the exploration of alarge document …
Exploring the Use of ChatGPT by Computer Science Students in Software Development: Applications, Ethical Considerations, and Insights for Engineering Education