Improving human-centric software defect evaluation, reporting, and fixing

Defect reporting customarily exists in most applications and web sites to support issue reporting by end users and for developers to receive actionable feedback. However, the impact of “human-centric” issues - such as age, gender, language, culture, physical and mental challenges, and socio-economic status - is often overlooked in the development process and during product inception and defect reporting. Most defect reporting tools lack necessary human-centric features to enable a challenged user to adequately navigate and report defects i.e. do not take into account the human differences between end users that cause defects for them in their software and make reporting of such defects difficult for them. Most defect reporting tools also lack sufficient defect report structuring, reporting guidance, and do not emphasize the possible perceived severity of the defect to developers from end users who are very different to them. If users are unable to report defects due to usability issues, this makes those same defect reports difficult to understand by the developer. In this paper, we aim to improve human-centric defect reporting by employing cognitive walkthrough with diverse end user personas, develop a prototype of an improved defect reporting tool, and evaluate the prototype’s defect reporting process from end user and developer perspectives. Our findings offer a foundation for improved human-centric defect evaluation, reporting and fixing.