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Fri 2 May 2025 15:22 - 15:29 at 207 - User Experience Chair(s): Ramiro Liscano

[Context] Gamification appears to improve enjoyment and quality of execution of software engineering activities, including software testing. Though commonly employed in industry, manual exploratory testing of web application GUIs was proven to be mundane and expensive. Gamification applied to that kind of testing activity has the potential to overcome its limitations, though no empirical research has explored this area yet. [Goal] Collect preliminary insights on how gamification, when performed by novice testers, affects the effectiveness, efficiency, test case realism, and user experience in exploratory testing of web applications. [Method] Common gamification features augment an existing exploratory testing tool: Final Score with Leaderboard, Injected Bugs, Progress Bar, and Exploration Highlights. The original tool and the gamified version are then compared in an experiment involving 144 participants. User experience is elicited using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) questionnaire instrument. [Results] Statistical analysis identified several significant differences for metrics that represent the effectiveness and efficiency of tests showing an improvement in coverage when they were developed with gamification. Additionally, user experience is improved with gamification. [Conclusions]. Gamification of exploratory testing has a tangible effect on how testers create test cases for web applications. While the results are mixed, the effects are most beneficial and interesting and warrant more research in the future. Further research shall be aimed at confirming the presented results in the context of state-of-the-art testing tools and real-world development environments.

Fri 2 May

Displayed time zone: Eastern Time (US & Canada) change

14:00 - 15:30
User ExperienceJournal-first Papers / Research Track / SE In Practice (SEIP) / SE in Society (SEIS) at 207
Chair(s): Ramiro Liscano Ontario Tech University
14:00
15m
Talk
A Tale of Two Comprehensions? Analyzing Student Programmer Attention During Code Summarization
Journal-first Papers
Zachary Karas Vanderbilt University, Aakash Bansal University of Notre Dame, Yifan Zhang Vanderbilt University, Toby Jia-Jun Li University of Notre Dame, Collin McMillan University of Notre Dame, Yu Huang Vanderbilt University
14:15
15m
Talk
Asking and Answering Questions During Memory Profiling
Journal-first Papers
Alison Fernandez Blanco University of Chile, Araceli Queirolo Cordova ISCLab, Department of Computer Science (DCC), University of Chile, Alexandre Bergel University of Chile, Juan Pablo Sandoval Alcocer Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
14:30
15m
Talk
Unveiling the Energy Vampires: A Methodology for Debugging Software Energy ConsumptionArtifact-FunctionalArtifact-AvailableArtifact-ReusableAward Winner
Research Track
Enrique Barba Roque TU Delft, Luís Cruz TU Delft, Thomas Durieux TU Delft
Pre-print
14:45
15m
Talk
Designing a Tool for Evacuation Plan Validation: Multi-Agent Simulations with Persona-Based UI
SE in Society (SEIS)
Gennaro Zanfardino University of L'Aquila, Antinisca Di Marco University of L'Aquila, Michele Tucci University of L'Aquila
15:00
15m
Talk
Testing False Recalls in E-commerce Apps: a User-perspective Blackbox Approach
SE In Practice (SEIP)
Shengnan Wu School of Computer Science, Fudan University, Yongxiang Hu Fudan University, Jiazhen Gu Fudan University, China, Penglei Mao School of Computer Science, Fudan University, Jin Meng Meituan Inc., Liujie Fan Meituan Inc., Zhongshi Luan Meituan Inc., Xin Wang Fudan University, Yangfan Zhou Fudan University
15:15
7m
Talk
On the acceptance by code reviewers of candidate security patches suggested by Automated Program Repair tools.Security
Journal-first Papers
Aurora Papotti Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Ranindya Paramitha University of Trento, Fabio Massacci University of Trento; Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
15:22
7m
Talk
On Effectiveness and Efficiency of Gamified Exploratory GUI Testing
Journal-first Papers
Riccardo Coppola Politecnico di Torino, Tommaso Fulcini Politecnico di Torino, Luca Ardito Politecnico di Torino, Marco Torchiano Politecnico di Torino, Emil Alégroth Blekinge Institute of Technology
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