GitSonifier: Using Sound to Portray Developer Conflict History |
Kevin North, Shane Bolan, Anita Sarma and Myra B. Cohen |
Supplementary Data for -- FSE NIER 2015 |
Sound Name | Sound Clip | Explanation |
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Developer Earcons |
Download: MP3 WAV |
These sounds represent different developers. Whenever a developer makes a commit, his or her sound is played in the sonification. |
Download: MP3 WAV |
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Examples of Sonifying Developers |
Download: MP3 WAV |
These examples demonstrate how sonifications are created by playing developers' earcons in the order the developers committed. For instance, in the first example, three different developers made commits. In the second example, one developer made two commits, then a second developer made two more commits. |
Download: MP3 WAV |
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Day Separator Earcon |
Download: MP3 WAV |
This earcon is played when a calendar day ends. |
Day Separator Example |
Download: MP3 WAV |
For example, in this sonification, a developer makes two commits, then makes a third commit on the following day. The day separator indicates when the developer stopped working on the first day. |
Conflict Drums: One Conflict |
Download: MP3 WAV |
Drums indicate the presence of conflicts. The louder the drums are, the more conflicts are present in the project. |
Conflict Drums: Two Conflicts |
Download: MP3 WAV |
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Conflict Drums: Three Conflicts |
Download: MP3 WAV |
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Conflict Drum Examples |
Download: MP3 WAV |
These are examples of how the conflict drums work. In the first example, when the drums start, a conflict was introduced. When the drums stop, the commit made immediately after the drums stop resolved the conflict. The second example is similar. In addition, when the drums get louder, it means that a second conflict was introduced before the first one was resolved. When the drums become quieter again, it indicates that one of the two conflicts was resolved. |
Download: MP3 WAV |
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Sonification of Real-World Data |
Download: MP3 WAV |
This sonification represents real-world data obtained from sonifying part of the version control history of Voldemort, an open-source project. The sonified data includes commits that developers contributed to Voldemort on November 4 and 5, 2009. |
Task Sonification Used in Our User Study |
Download: MP3 WAV |
In our user study, we created several variations of the real-world example in order to portray different version-control histories. This sonification is one of the variations we created. There are two primary differences between this sonification and the real-world data sonification. First, one developer was represented by a choir in the real-world data, but a different developer is represented by an oboe in this one. Second, there was one conflict in the real-world data, but there are two in this sonification. Study participants were asked to identify these changes as well as recognize that both sonifications have the same number of days. |
We ran the training and sonification questions portions of our experiment in a website hosted on a laboratory computer. You can see them here: Training and Sonification Questions
You can see the questionnaire we asked participants to complete here: Questionnaire
This research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation awards CCF-1253786 and CCF-1161767. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
We would like to acknowledge Bakhtiar Kasi for sharing Voldemort git data history and analysis algorithms with us.