Social coding platforms such as GitHub allows software developers to work collaboratively. However, if such platforms do not support specific cognitive styles, they disproportionately impact newcomers with these styles, especially those from underrepresented groups such as women. Research shows that the cognitive styles that are common to underrepresented communities are often unsupported, creating an additional barrier to entry for these communities. In this paper, we use the GenderMag method to evaluate GitHub to find cognitive style-specific usability bugs. We redesigned the ``buggy'' GitHub features through a web browser plugin, which we evaluated through a between-subjects experiment (n=75). Our results indicate that the changes to the interface result in an improvement in the performance and self-efficacy of users, mainly for individuals with cognitive styles that are more common to women. Designers of social coding platforms and software engineering tools can use our results to design more inclusive development environments.
翻译:GitHub 等社会编码平台允许软件开发者协作工作。 但是,如果这些平台不支持特定的认知风格,则这些模式对新来者,特别是代表人数不足的群体(如妇女)的影响特别大。 研究表明,代表人数不足的社区常见的认知风格往往得不到支持,给这些社区进入带来了额外的障碍。 在本文中,我们使用 GeemMag 方法来评估 GitHub 的认知风格特有的可用性错误。 我们通过一个网络浏览器插件重新设计了“buggy' GitHub ” 功能,我们通过一个学科间实验(n=75)对它进行了评估。我们的结果表明,对界面的改变导致用户性能和自我效能的改善,主要是对具有认知风格的妇女更为常见的个人而言。社会编码平台和软件工程工具的设计者可以使用我们的成果来设计更具包容性的发展环境。