Assessing Software Developer Productivity and Emotional State Using Biometrics

Developers work with many different artifacts and environments throughout their careers, whether it be in established rules on how to write code, how they have their code presented in their IDE, or how developers communicate with one another. Determining how different aspects of a developer's environment and coding practices affect their level of program comprehension can give us insight into the cognitive processes and the construction of mental models by a developer, which can ultimately determine how a developer's level of productivity may be measured. In this paper, I provide an overview of several empirical studies where I assess comprehension and emotional state using biometric devices while developers perform typical software engineering tasks. The results of these studies can help develop guidelines to help towards productivity. Advisor: Bonita Sharif (University of Nebraska - Lincoln)