XLBlocks: On the Effect of a Visual Language on Formula Creation and Comprehension in Spreadsheets

The use of spreadsheets in industry is widespread. Their outcomes are often used to substantiate critical business decisions. Unfortunately, spreadsheets are also error-prone. Consequently, companies risk making decisions based on inaccurate information, which eventually could lead to loss of money and reputation.<br/>This dissertation...

Spreadsheet use and programming experience: An exploratory survey

We report results from a survey on spreadsheet use and experience with textual programming languages (n=49). We find significant correlations between self-reported formula experience, programming experience, and overall spreadsheet experience. We discuss the implications of our findings for spreadsheet research and end-user programming...

Challenges of end-user programmers: Reflections from two groups of end-users

The goal of this dissertation is to explore, understand, and mitigate when possible, the challenges that end-users face when creating their software programs. To gain a wider perspective of the challenges, we investigated two groups of end-users: spreadsheet users and school-age children learning to program.

Analyzing and Visualizing Spreadsheets

Spreadsheets are used extensively in industry: they are the number one tool for financial analysis and are also prevalent in other domains, such as logistics and planning. Their flexibility and immediate feedback make them easy to use for non-programmers. But as easy as spreadsheets are to build, so difficult can they be to analyze and adapt....

Supporting professional spreadsheet users by generating leveled dataflow diagrams

Thanks to their flexibility and intuitive programming model, spreadsheets are widely used in industry, often for businesscritical applications. Similar to software developers, professional spreadsheet users demand support for maintaining and transferring their spreadsheets. In this paper, we first study the problems and information needs of...