Authors
Polly Brown & John Gould
Abstract
Nine experienced users of electronic spreadsheets each created three spreadsheets. Although participants were quite confident that their spreadsheets were accurate, 44 percent of the spreadsheets contained user-generated programming errors.
With regard to the spreadsheet creation process, we found that experienced spreadsheet users spend a large percentage of their time using the cursor keys, primarily for the purpose of moving the cursor around the spreadsheet.
Users did not spend a lot of time planning before launching into spreadsheet creation, nor did they spend much time in a separate, systematic debugging stage. Participants spent 21 percent of their time pausing, presumably reading and/or thinking, prior to the initial keystrokes of spreadsheet creation episodes.
Sample
Forty-four percent of the spreadsheets had at least one error. Every participant created at least one error.
Participants were generally "quite confident" that their spreadsheets were accurate. This confidence was just as high on the spreadsheets that actually contained errors.
Publication
1987, ACM Transactions on Office Information Systems, Volume 5, Number 3, July, pages 258-272
