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1. Engineering gender-inclusivity into software: ten teams' tales from the trenches

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3377811.3380371  

   Hilderbrand, Claudia; Perdriau, Christopher; Letaw, Lara; Emard, Jillian; Steine-Hanson, Zoe; Burnett, Margaret; Sarma, Anita (June 2020, ACM/IEEE 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering)

   null (Ed.)

   Although the need for gender-inclusivity in software is gaining attention among SE researchers and SE practitioners, and at least one method (GenderMag) has been published to help, little has been reported on how to make such methods work in real-world settings. Real-world teams are ever-mindful of the practicalities of adding new methods on top of their existing processes. For example, how can they keep the time costs viable? How can they maximize impacts of using it? What about controversies that can arise in talking about gender? To find out how software teams "in the trenches" handle these and similar questions, we collected the GenderMag-based processes of 10 real-world software teams---more than 50 people---for periods ranging from 5 months to 3.5 years. We present these teams' insights and experiences in the form of 9 practices, 2 potential pitfalls, and 2 open issues, so as to provide their insights to other real-world software teams trying to engineer gender-inclusivity into their software products. 

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2. AID: An automated detector for gender-inclusivity bugs in OSS project pages

   https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSE43902.2021.00128  

   Chatterjee, Amreeta; Guizani, Mariam; Stevens, Catherine; Emard, Jillian; May, Mary Evelyn; Burnett, Margaret; Ahmed, Iftekhar; Sarma, Anita (May 2021, IEEE/ACM 43rd International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE))

   null (Ed.)

   The tools and infrastructure used in tech, including Open Source Software (OSS), can embed “inclusivity bugs”— features that disproportionately disadvantage particular groups of contributors. To see whether OSS developers have existing practices to ward off such bugs, we surveyed 266 OSS developers. Our results show that a majority (77%) of developers do not use any inclusivity practices, and 92% of respondents cited a lack of concrete resources to enable them to do so. To help fill this gap, this paper introduces AID, a tool that automates the GenderMag method to systematically find gender-inclusivity bugs in software. We then present the results of the tool's evaluation on 20 GitHub projects. The tool achieved precision of 0.69, recall of 0.92, an F-measure of 0.79 and even captured some inclusivity bugs that human GenderMag teams missed. 

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3. From GenderMag to InclusiveMag: An Inclusive Design Meta-Method

   https://doi.org/10.1109/VLHCC.2019.8818889  

   Mendez, Christopher; Letaw, Lara; Burnett, Margaret; Stumpf, Simone; Sarma, Anita; Hilderbrand, Claudia (October 2019, IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing)

   How can software practitioners assess whether their software supports diverse users? Although there are empirical processes that can be used to find “inclusivity bugs” piecemeal, what is often needed is a systematic inspection method to assess software's support for diverse populations. To help fill this gap, this paper introduces InclusiveMag, a generalization of GenderMag that can be used to generate systematic inclusiveness methods for a particular dimension of diversity. We then present a multicase study covering eight diversity dimensions, of eight teams' experiences applying InclusiveMag to eight under-served populations and their “mainstream” counterparts. 

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4. From GenderMag to InclusiveMag: An Inclusive Design Meta-Method

   Christopher Mendez, Lara Letaw (January 2019, IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing)

   How can software practitioners assess whether their software supports diverse users? Although there are empirical processes that can be used to find “inclusivity bugs” piecemeal, what is often needed is a systematic inspection method to assess software’s support for diverse populations. To help fill this gap, this paper introduces InclusiveMag, a generalization of Gender- Mag that can be used to generate systematic inclusiveness methods for a particular dimension of diversity. We then present a multicase study covering eight diversity dimensions, of eight teams’ experiences applying InclusiveMag to eight under-served populations and their “mainstream” counterparts. 

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5. EVALUATION OF SYSTEMATIC DESIGN METHODS USED IN SENIOR DESIGN PROJECTS

   Angran Xiao, Gaffar Gailani (October 2021, Proceedings of IMECE 2021, ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition)

   null (Ed.)

   System Engineering (SE) is utilized in structuring a product development process into simple and collaborative activities, while at the same time, supporting engineers’ decision-making. In most undergraduate engineering design courses, SE was taught by assigning industrial-like projects in which teams of students developed products using certain design methods while following structured design process. It has been observed that some design methods were adopted naturally and used effectively by students while some are less preferred. This is due to various reasons, from strict project deadlines to the fact that some methods are difficult to understand. In this paper, we studied these design methods in the context of senior design projects. We have observed students’ applications of these methods and conducted surveys to assess whether they believe these methods helped their design activities. This study will help us understand how to help students gain knowledge in product development through project-based learning, as well as provide some insights on how inexperienced engineers may use various design methods. 

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