XLBlocks

a Block-based Formula Editor for Spreadsheet Formulas

Conference Paper (2019)
Author(s)

Bas Jansen (TU Delft - Software Engineering)

F. Hermans (Universiteit Leiden)

Research Group
Software Engineering
Copyright
© 2019 B. Jansen, F.F.J. Hermans
DOI related publication
https://doi.org/10.1109/VLHCC.2019.8818748
More Info
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Publication Year
2019
Language
English
Copyright
© 2019 B. Jansen, F.F.J. Hermans
Research Group
Software Engineering
Pages (from-to)
55-63
ISBN (print)
978-1-7281-0811-7
ISBN (electronic)
978-1-7281-0810-0
Reuse Rights

Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.

Abstract

Spreadsheets are frequently used in industry to support critical business decisions. Unfortunately, they also suffer from error-proneness, which sometimes results in costly consequences. Experiments in the field of program education have shown that programmers tend to make fewer errors and can better focus on the logic of a program if they use a block-based language instead of a textual one. We hypothesize that a block-based formula editor could support spreadsheet users in a similar way. Therefore, we develop XLBlocks and conduct a think-aloud study with 13 experienced spreadsheet users from industry. Participants are asked to create and edit several formulas, using our block-based language. We then ask them to evaluate this editor using the Cognitive Dimensions of Notations framework. We found that for all dimensions the block-based formula editor received a better evaluation than the default text-based formula editor.

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