Bots for Pull Requests

The Good, the Bad, and the Promising

Conference paper (2022)

Authors

Mairieli Wessel Software Engineering - EEMCS
Ahmad Abdellatif Concordia University
Igor Scaliante Wiese Universidade Tecnológica Federal Do Paraná (UTFPR)
Tayana Conte Federal University of Amazonas
Emad Shihab Concordia University
Marco Aurélio Gerosa Northern Arizona University, Universidade de São Paulo
Igor Steinmacher Northern Arizona University
Research Group
Software Engineering (EEMCS) (TU Delft)
Copyright: © 2022 Mairieli Wessel, Ahmad Abdellatif, Igor Scaliante Wiese, Tayana Conte, Emad Shihab, Marco Aurélio Gerosa, Igor Steinmacher
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3510003.3512765
Automation Collaborative Development Software Bots GitHub Bots Human-bot Interaction Open Source Software Design Fiction
More Info
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Published Date

2022

Language

English

Faculty

Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science

Department

Software Technology

Research Group

Software Engineering

Abstract

Software bots automate tasks within Open Source Software (OSS) projects’ pull requests and save reviewing time and effort (“the good”). However, their interactions can be disruptive and noisy and lead to information overload (“the bad”). To identify strategies to overcome such problems, we applied Design Fiction as a participatory method with 32 practitioners. We elicited 22 design strategies for a bot mediator or the pull request user interface (“the promising”). Participants envisioned a separate place in the pull request interface for bot interactions and a bot mediator that can summarize and customize other bots’ actions to mitigate noise. We also collected participants’ perceptions about a prototype implementing the envisioned strategies. Our design strategies can guide the development of future bots and social coding platforms.