SWIRL: Interactive Sensemaking of Tool-Generated Warnings through Customized Summaries
Programmers using bug-finding tools often review their reported warnings one by one. Based on the insight that identifying recurring themes and relationships can enhance the cognitive process of sensemaking, we propose SWIRL, which supports interpreting tool-generated warnings through interactive, customized summarization. With active feedback, SWIRL derives summary rules for grouping of related warnings on the fly. As users mark warnings as interesting or uninteresting, SWIRL’s rule inference algorithm surfaces common characteristics, highlighting structural similarities in containment, subtyping, invoked methods, accessed fields, and expressions. We demonstrate SWIRL on real-world warnings generated from Infer and SpotBugs on two mature Java projects. In a within-subject user study with 14 participants, users articulated root causes for similar uninteresting warnings with more confidence when using SWIRL, compared to the baseline that lists individual warnings without customized summary rules. Among participants, we observed significant individual variation in desired grouping, reinforcing the need for individualized sensemaking. The simulation we conducted shows that SWIRL’s rule-level feedback expedites sensemaking—requiring only 11.8 interactions on average to align all inferred rules with a simulated user’s labels when combined with instance-level feedback, compared to 17.8 interactions when using instance-level feedback alone. Our evaluation suggests that SWIRL’s active learning-based summarization can enhance the sensemaking process of tool-generated warnings.
Fri 18 SepDisplayed time zone: Amsterdam, Berlin, Bern, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna change
16:00 - 17:30 | Session 27 - Tomorrow’s AI ToolboxTool Demonstration and Data Showcase Track / Visions and Emerging Results Track / Registered Reports / Research Papers Track at Auditorium Chair(s): Emanuela Guglielmi University of Molise Theme: Emerging Results, Tools & Industry Innovation | ||
16:00 10mPaper | Generating Stack Overflow Post Edits with LLMs: A Taxonomy-Driven Evaluation Registered Reports Mehedi Hasan Shanto University of Windsor, Muhammad Asaduzzaman University of Windsor, Md Ahasanuzzaman Queen's University, Alioune Ngom University of Windsor DOI Pre-print | ||
16:10 10mPaper | Training Dynamics of Neural Software Defect Predictors under Coupled Data-Quality Issues Registered Reports Emmanuel Charleson Dapaah University of Göttingen, Philip Makedonski Institute of Computer Science, University of Göttingen, Lower Saxony, Germany, Jens Grabowski Pre-print | ||
16:20 20mPaper | Smelly Bad Practices in Performance System Tests: Detection, Prevalence, and Lifetime Research Papers Track Sergio Di Meglio Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Valeria Pontillo Gran Sasso Science Institute (GSSI), L’Aquila, Italy, Luigi Libero Lucio Starace Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Luana Martins University of Salerno, Dario Di Nucci Software Engineering (SeSa) Lab, University of Salerno, Italy, Fabio Palomba University of Salerno Pre-print | ||
16:40 20mPaper | SWIRL: Interactive Sensemaking of Tool-Generated Warnings through Customized Summaries Research Papers Track | ||
17:00 10mShort-paper | AI Prototyper : A Figma Plugin for Decomposition-Based GUI Prototyping with LLMs Tool Demonstration and Data Showcase Track Tawatchai Salangsingha Edinburgh Napier University, Ashkan Sami Edinburgh Napier University, Md Zia Ullah Edinburgh Napier University, Iain McGregor Edinburgh Napier University Pre-print Media Attached | ||
17:10 10mShort-paper | Multi-Agent Repair of Dependency Updates in Kotlin Multiplatform Visions and Emerging Results Track Santiago Bobadilla-Suarez Universidad de los Andes, Colombia, Camilo Escobar-Velásquez Universidad de los Andes, Colombia | ||