Whilst programming, one can either be in the flow and everything works smoothly or struggle to concentrate and spend a large amount of time solving error messages. One reason for not being in the flow can be cognitive overload and stress. The aim of this master project is to make the flow measurable by examining cognitive load and stress during software developers' everyday tasks. Making the flow measurable and finding techniques that promote this state would increase a programmer's well-being and productivity.
The programming flow can be measured by recording a person's physiological activity with body sensors during a programming task. Reactions of the eyes, the brain, the skin and the heart give insights into experienced cognitive load and stress. Making physiological activity visible in source code makes it possible to determine problematic sections in the code.
This master project builds up on the previous master project which involved the extension and use of an existing IntelliJ Integrated Development Environment (IDE) plugin, CognitIDE. The primary function of this plugin is to record physiological data and link it to specific code words. The students are expected to further work on extending the capabilities of this plugin. The major part of the project will be to conduct an ethics-board-approved empirical software engineering study with SAP software developers using this tool and analyzing the physiological data.
