Extra Seminar Computer Science

Title:

Software Development: from Cognition to Emotions

ABSTRACT

Cognition refers to processes such as attention, problem-solving, and planning, whereas emotions are involved in the conscious (or unconscious) evaluation of events.

Software development is inherently a cognitive process in which continuous decisions are taken with emotions attached to it—from the anger caused by an hard-to-locate bug to the joy of having a pull request merged. Cognitive processes and emotions can potentially be exploited to improve how we develop software.

In this seminar, I will present initial results about the elicitation of developers‘ cognition and its impact on, among others, source code quality and productivity. Moreover, I will introduce further studies aimed at identifying developers‘ emotions using physiological sensors and leverage them to improve their experience.