Toward A Novel Tool for Incorporating Video Into Effective Bug Reporting
Abstract
Management of bug reports is a necessary evil in the software development process. Report management involves handling user-submitted bug reports, which is known to be a time-consuming task because the developers need to sift through many reports, with many containing insufficient information. This lack of information is partially attributed to a gap in knowledge: users without relevant technical knowledge often do not know how to appropriately report a bug. Attaching a video recording to such reports has shown promise in reducing bug resolution time in bug reporting for mobile applications, and might have the potential for similar results for other types of systems. However, editing or even creating videos specifically for bug reporting is not a simple task. In this thesis, I introduce VideoLab, a novel prototype tool to simplify the creation of videos for bug reports. VideoLab is based primarily around a pared-down video editing interface with a set of dedicated annotations that aim to make communicating defective behavior to developers easier for end-users.