Toward Understanding Task Complexity in Maintenance-Based Studies of Programming Tools

Researchers conducting studies on programming tools often make use of maintenance tasks. The complexity of these tasks can influence the behavior of participants significantly. At the same time, the complexity of tasks is difficult to pinpoint due to the many sources of complexity for maintenance tasks. As a result, researchers may struggle to deliberately decide in which regard their tasks should be complex and in which regard they should be simple. To help researchers make more deliberate decisions about the complexity of their tasks, we discuss different factors of task complexity. We draw these factors from previous user studies on programming tools as well as from a task complexity model from ergonomics research that we apply to maintenance tasks. In the end, task complexity might always be too complex to be fully controlled. Nevertheless, we hope that our discussion helps other researchers to decide in which dimensions their tasks are complex and in which dimensions they want to keep them simple.