Laura Beckwith

 I'm working at Microsoft. You can reach me at: laura.beckwith[at]microsoft.com

 I passed my PhD Defense on Monday, April 23rd! If you're interested you can find my dissertation here: Dissertation

Research:   I researched how best to support both genders in end-user programming environments.  We termed this research Gender HCI.

Selected Publications (by year):  

2006

Beckwith, L., Kissinger, C., Burnett, M., Widenbeck, S., Lawrance, J., Blackwell, A., and Cook, C. Tinkering and Gender in End-User Programmers' Debugging. In Proceedings of ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'06). (To Appear) (pdf)

2005

Beckwith, L., Sorte, S., Burnett, M. Wiedenbeck, S., Chintakovid, T., and Cook, C. Designing Features for Both Genders in End-User Programming Environments. In Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing Languages and Environments, Dallas, TX, September 2005, 153-160. (pdf)

Phalgune, A., Kissinger, C., Burnett, M., Cook, C., Beckwith, L., and Ruthruff, J. Garbage In, Garbage Out? An Empirical Look at Oracle Mistakes by End-User Programmers. In Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing Languages and Environments, Dallas, TX, September 2005, 45-52. (pdf)

Beckwith, L., Burnett, M., Wiedenbeck, S., Cook, C., Sorte, S., Hastings, M., Effectiveness of End-User Debugging Software Features: Are There Gender Issues? In Proceedings of ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'05), Portland, Oregon, April 2005, 869-878. (pdf)

2004

Beckwith, L. and Burnett, M., Gender: An Important Factor in End-User Programming Environments? In Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing Languages and Environments, Rome, Italy, September 2004, 107-114. (pdf)

Ruthruff, J., Phalgune, A., Beckwith, L., Burnett, M., and Cook, C., Rewarding Good Behavior: End-User Debugging and Rewards. In Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, September 2004, 115-122. (pdf)

Robertson, T., Prabhakararao, S., Burnett, M., Cook, C., Ruthruff, J., Beckwith, L., and Phalgune, A. Impact of Interruption Style on End-User Debugging. In Proceedings of ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'04), Vienna, Austria, April 2004, 287-294. (pdf)

2003

Wilson, A., Burnett, M., Beckwith, L., Granatir, O., Casburn, L., Cook, C., Durham, M., and Rothermel, G., Harnessing Curiosity to Increase Correctness in End-User Programming. In Proceedings of ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'03), Ft. Lauderdale, FL, April 2003, 305-312. (pdf)

2002

Beckwith, L., Burnett, M., and Cook, C., Reasoning about Many-to-Many Requirement Relationships in Spreadsheet Grids, In Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Human-Centric Computing Languages and Environments, Arlington, VA, Sept. 2002. (pdf)