Bots for pull requests

Mairieli Wessel, Ahmad Abdellatif, Igor Wiese, Tayana Conte, Emad Shihab, Marco Aurélio Gerosa, Igor Steinmacher

2022Proceedings of the 44th International Conference on Software Engineering23 citationsDOI Open Access PDF

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.

Topics & Concepts

Computer scienceInterface (matter)Human–computer interactionCoding (social sciences)Participatory designInformation overloadSoftwareInterface designUser interfaceWorld Wide WebEngineeringOperating systemStatisticsBubbleMaximum bubble pressure methodParallelsMechanical engineeringMathematicsMobile Crowdsensing and CrowdsourcingInnovative Human-Technology InteractionOpen Source Software Innovations