Research projects in University of Cambridge that are either currently in progress or recently completed include:

1. An empirical evaluation of the effect of visual metaphor in programming languages designed for use by novice end-user programmers. This work has been presented at the IEEE conference on Visual Languages, and is to be published in the Journal of Visual Languages and Computing.

2. A survey of scientific end-users of a laboratory instrumentation and control language. This work has been presented at the Empirical Studies of Programmers Workshop, and is to be published in the Journal of Visual Languages and Computing. (In collaboration with Kirsten Whitley of Vanderbilt University).

3. A text processing system designed to provide the capabilities of the Perl language to end-user software developers. This work was presented at the Visual End User workshop, and included in a book published by Morgan Kaufmann.

4. The continued development of Green's Cognitive Dimensions of Notations framework, still the only analytic technique that directly assesses the usability of programming environments. This work is continuing in collaboration with Thomas Green at Leeds University, and is the subject of many ongoing publications and invited talks.

5. A cognitive model of the initial stages of a programming task: characterising the decision taken by an end-user when investing in a new task abstraction. This work has been presented to the Psychology of Programming Interest Group, and is the subject of an ongoing collaboration with Chris Roast of Sheffield Hallam University.

6. A system which gives end-users the ability to customise their working environment by automatically resolving conflicts and uncertainty between different behaviour modules, based on data gained from observation of the user's own actitivies. This work is being conducted by Richard Watts, a student in the Computer Laboratory.

7. A study of the end-user programming facilities in domestic audio and video appliances. This work is being conducted by Rachel Hewson, currently a senior research associate in the Computer Laboratory.

8. Several interview studies of end-users in activities that resemble programming in different ways (office filing, use of computer macros and styles, music composition), and comparison of these activities to those of professional programmers. This work has been conducted in collaboration with Thomas Green, and has been presented at the International Computer Music Conference and the Psychology of Programming Interest Group.

9. The development of a system for end-user programming of facilities in an intensively networked home environment. This work is being conducted with David Greaves, Daniel Gordon and Robert Hague in the Computer Laboratory. The resulting end-user programming technique is currently the subject of a patent application, and has been submitted to the IEEE conference on Human-Centric Computing.

10. The development of novel end-user programming techniques for time-based control specification (e.g. domestic central heating), based on interviews with commercial product designers and development of a novel prototype controller. This work is being conducted with Rachel Hewson and Simon Moore in the Computer Laboratory.

11. Facilities for improving the quality of end-user spreadsheet construction, through the automated inference of assertions. This work is being conducted in collaboration with Margaret Burnett of Oregon State University.