How Software Developers Mitigate Collaboration Friction with Chatbots

Presentation from the Talking with Conversational Agents in Collaborative Action workshop at the 20th ACM conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW), 2017, ACM.

Transcript

1. How Software Developers Mitigate Collaborative Friction with Chatbots Carlene Lebeuf, Margaret-Anne Storey, Alexey Zagalsky CHISEL Group, University of Victoria, Canada
2. WHAT IS A CHATBOT? An application that performs automated, predefined, and often repetitive tasks. They act as conduits between users and services, typically through a conversational interface. 2 How Software Developers Reduce Collaborative Friction with Chatbots Carlene Lebeuf, Margaret-Anne Storey, Alexey Zagalsky
3. Software teams use bots to fill development roles (Storey & Zagalsky, 2016) ▸ Code Quality ▸ Testing ▸ Development Operations ▸ Customer Support ▸ Documentation ▸ Entertainment ...but what about Collaboration? 3 How Software Developers Reduce Collaborative Friction with Chatbots Carlene Lebeuf, Margaret-Anne Storey, Alexey Zagalsky CHATBOTS IN SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
4. How can chatbots support collaboration in software development? 4 How Software Developers Reduce Collaborative Friction with Chatbots Carlene Lebeuf, Margaret-Anne Storey, Alexey Zagalsky ▸ RQ: What collaboration friction points can chatbots help mitigate in software development, and how?
5. COLLABORATIVE FRICTION 5 Our Previous Studies How Software Developers Reduce Collaborative Friction with Chatbots Carlene Lebeuf, Margaret-Anne Storey, Alexey Zagalsky Our Personal Experience in Software Development Literature on Software Development We derived a set of collaborative friction points in software development from...
6. 6 How Software Developers Reduce Collaborative Friction with Chatbots Carlene Lebeuf, Margaret-Anne Storey, Alexey Zagalsky WHERE DO COLLABORATION BREAKDOWNS OCCUR? The Model of Socio-Technical Systems for Collaborative Software Development, based on Whitworth’s Model of Socio-Technical Systems (2008). TEAM SOCIAL SYSTEM SOCIO-TECHNICAL (ST) SYSTEM HUMAN COMPUTER INTERACTION (HCI) SYSTEM SOFTWARE SYSTEM HARDWARE SYSTEM
7. FRICTION IN TEAM INTERACTIONS Friction in team interactions—the team’s social system level—can occur when… ↯ Understanding team members’ roles and expertise 7 How Software Developers Reduce Collaborative Friction with Chatbots Carlene Lebeuf, Margaret-Anne Storey, Alexey Zagalsky Team Social System HCI System Software System Hardware System ST System
8. FRICTION IN TEAM INTERACTIONS Friction at team interactions can occur when… ▸ Understanding team members’ roles and expertise ▸ Adhering to team procedures and agreements ▸ Understanding and working towards team goals 8 How Software Developers Reduce Collaborative Friction with Chatbots Carlene Lebeuf, Margaret-Anne Storey, Alexey Zagalsky Team Social System HCI System Software System Hardware System ST System ↯ Understanding team members’ roles and expertise Microsoft Teams’ WhoBot can help! “Who is… ?” “Who knows about… ?” https://www.onmsft.com/news/microsoft-teams-introduces-t- bot-and-who-bot
9. FRICTION IN TEAM INTERACTIONS Friction in team interactions—the team’s social system level—can occur when… ↯ Understanding team members’ roles and expertise 9 How Software Developers Reduce Collaborative Friction with Chatbots Carlene Lebeuf, Margaret-Anne Storey, Alexey Zagalsky Team Social System HCI System Software System Hardware System ST System ↯ Adhering to team procedures and agreements ↯ Understanding and working towards team goals ↯ Coordinating team activities ↯ Managing trust and team cooperation
10. FRICTION IN TEAM INTERACTIONS Friction at team interactions can occur when… ▸ Understanding team members’ roles and expertise ▸ Adhering to team procedures and agreements ▸ Understanding and working towards team goals ▸ Coordinating team activities ▸ Managing trust and team cooperation 10 How Software Developers Reduce Collaborative Friction with Chatbots Carlene Lebeuf, Margaret-Anne Storey, Alexey Zagalsky Team Social System HCI System Software System Hardware System ST System ↯ Managing trust and team cooperation Oskar checks in to see how you are doing, allowing teammates to offer support. Knelf is a team building trivia chatbot. http://www.knelf.com/slack.html http://oskar.hanno.co/
11. INDIVIDUALS’ INTERACTIONS TECHNOLOGY Friction from individuals’ interactions with technology—the HCI system level—can occur when… ↯ Using distracting and interruptive technologies 11 How Software Developers Reduce Collaborative Friction with Chatbots Carlene Lebeuf, Margaret-Anne Storey, Alexey Zagalsky Team Social System HCI System Software System Hardware System ST System
12. INDIVIDUALS’ INTERACTIONS TECHNOLOGY Friction at individuals’ interaction with technology, the HCI system level, can occur when… ▸ Distracting and interruptive technologies ▸ Maintaining awareness of new technologies ▸ Understanding channel affordances 12 How Software Developers Reduce Collaborative Friction with Chatbots Carlene Lebeuf, Margaret-Anne Storey, Alexey Zagalsky Team Social System HCI System Software System Hardware System ST System ↯ Distracting and interruptive technologies Tomatobot helps you reduce distractions and increase your productivity using the Pomodoro Method. https://tomatobot.matthewhiggins.me/
13. INDIVIDUALS’ INTERACTIONS TECHNOLOGY Friction from individuals’ interactions with technology—the HCI system level—can occur when… ↯ Using distracting and interruptive technologies 13 How Software Developers Reduce Collaborative Friction with Chatbots Carlene Lebeuf, Margaret-Anne Storey, Alexey Zagalsky Team Social System HCI System Software System Hardware System ST System ↯ Maintaining awareness of new technologies ↯ Understanding channel affordances
14. INDIVIDUALS’ INTERACTIONS TECHNOLOGY Friction at individuals’ interaction with technology, the HCI system level, can occur when… ▸ Distracting and interruptive technologies ▸ Maintaining awareness of new technologies ▸ Understanding channel affordances 14 How Software Developers Reduce Collaborative Friction with Chatbots Carlene Lebeuf, Margaret-Anne Storey, Alexey Zagalsky Team Social System HCI System Software System Hardware System ST System ↯ Understanding channel affordances T-Bot helps users understand how to use the Microsoft Teams platform. “How do I… ?” https://www.onmsft.com/news/microsoft- teams-introduces-t-bot-and-who-bot
15. TEAMS’ INTERACTIONS WITH TECHNOLOGY Friction from teams’ interactions with technology—the ST system level—can occur when... ↯ Experiencing information overload 15 How Software Developers Reduce Collaborative Friction with Chatbots Carlene Lebeuf, Margaret-Anne Storey, Alexey Zagalsky Team Social System HCI System Software System Hardware System ST System
16. TEAMS’ INTERACTIONS WITH TECHNOLOGY Friction at team's interaction with technology, the ST system level, can occur when… ▸ Information overload ▸ Adopting and understanding tool usage in the team’s context ▸ Maintaining awareness of project activities ▸ Inadequate collaboration tooling ▸ Miscommunication on text-based channels 16 How Software Developers Reduce Collaborative Friction with Chatbots Carlene Lebeuf, Margaret-Anne Storey, Alexey Zagalsky Team Social System HCI System Software System Hardware System ST System ↯ Information overload Developers use chatbot-style integrations for their everyday tools. “You take Slack out of the equation and all of these integrations that we have tied into it …. We’d have to have all of those notifications open in tabs... and some of them we can’t get that way. … We’re blind.” - Software Developer (Startup, 2012) https://dzone.com/articles/the-ultimate-devops-too ls-ecosystem-tutorial-part
17. TEAMS’ INTERACTIONS WITH TECHNOLOGY Friction from teams’ interactions with technology—the ST system level—can occur when... ↯ Experiencing information overload 17 How Software Developers Reduce Collaborative Friction with Chatbots Carlene Lebeuf, Margaret-Anne Storey, Alexey Zagalsky Team Social System HCI System Software System Hardware System ST System ↯ Adopting and understanding tool usage in the team’s context ↯ Maintaining awareness of project activities
18. TEAMS’ INTERACTIONS WITH TECHNOLOGY Friction at team's interaction with technology, the ST system level, can occur when… ▸ Information overload ▸ Adopting and understanding tool usage in the team’s context ▸ Maintaining awareness of project activities ▸ Inadequate collaboration tooling ▸ Miscommunication on text-based channels 18 How Software Developers Reduce Collaborative Friction with Chatbots Carlene Lebeuf, Margaret-Anne Storey, Alexey Zagalsky Team Social System HCI System Software System Hardware System ST System ↯ Maintaining awareness of project activities. “We have all of our public facing GitHub repos <integrated with Slack>, so <we can get notified> and also chat about it inside Slack.” - Software Developer (Startup, 2016) https://github.com http://partyline.rocks
19. TEAMS’ INTERACTIONS WITH TECHNOLOGY Friction from teams’ interactions with technology—the ST system level—can occur when... ↯ Experiencing information overload ↯ Adopting and understanding tool usage in the team’s context ↯ Maintaining awareness of project activities 19 How Software Developers Reduce Collaborative Friction with Chatbots Carlene Lebeuf, Margaret-Anne Storey, Alexey Zagalsky Team Social System HCI System Software System Hardware System ST System ↯ Inadequate collaboration tooling ↯ Miscommunication on text-based channels
20. 20 BRINGING “VOICE” INTO SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT http://demo.softserveinc.com/voicemybot
21. 21 BRINGING “VOICE” INTO SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT https://youtu.be/Fa6iMosg3hM
22. NEXT STEPS 22 Interviews with Developers How do developers use chatbots? What struggles do they face? How Software Developers Reduce Collaborative Friction with Chatbots Carlene Lebeuf, Margaret-Anne Storey, Alexey Zagalsky How should they be using chatbots?
23. Carlene Lebeuf clebeuf@uvic.ca Margaret-Anne Storey mastorey@uvic.ca Alexey Zagalsky alexeyza@gmail.com Points for Discussion... 1. How should we study chatbots? Can existing models and theories of collaboration help explain how chatbots are being used? 2. What other collaborative friction points can be addressed with new or existing chatbots? 3. With rapid progress being made in the fields of AI, ML, and speech interfaces, how might this change the use of chatbots in the future? 4. What risks are introduced by adopting chatbots in software development? Thanks! How Software Developers Reduce Collaborative Friction with Chatbots Carlene Lebeuf, Margaret-Anne Storey, Alexey Zagalsky www.thechiselgroup.org