Software development has reached an interesting paradox: while software has contributed to incredible advances in just about every discipline imaginable, software developers have kind of forgotten about themselves - the tools they use today still resemble the tools they used decades ago. Herein lies a key challenge: what tools can help developers be more creative and productive, so they can deliver software to everyone everywhere that is more suited for the job, more user friendly, and of higher quality? Dr. André van der Hoek, Professor of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine, is driven by the desire to address this challenge. He particularly seeks to assist developers with innovative new software tools that match how they wish to - and typically how they try to - work on a daily basis. His results are both immediate, in terms of small but critical enhancements to existing tools, and more long-term, in terms of visionary new approaches that radically change how software is developed altogether.

Perhaps most unique about Dr. van der Hoek is the fact that he immerses himself in current practice, studying actual software developers engaged in their actual work at companies as diverse as Boeing, IBM, HP, Hitachi, Appirio, Adobe, and others. By spending time with the developers and closely observing what they do, Dr. van der Hoek has been able to unearth previously invisible practices and design novel tools that support those practices. Further distinguishing his research, Dr. van der Hoek brings the newly designed tools back to the very organizations he studies, with direct and widespread impact. Dr. van der Hoek’s is equally passionate about education. Through the design of educational games and by bringing what he learns in the research into the classroom, Dr. van der Hoek helps coach students to be leaders well-versed in the next movements of software development.

Current research includes:

• Software Designers in Action: Dr. van der Hoek’s work asks how to ideally support software developers in designing software. Today, it is ill understood how designers work, how their ideas slowly but surely form into a comprehensive structure, and how they collaborate with colleagues in doing so. Dr. van der Hoek’s studies of software designers at the whiteboard, while ongoing, have already lead to the articulation of 62 practices of expert software designers, a research prototype tool that already saw varied use (including at Boeing), and a startup (sketchtogether.com) that now is turning the research into a real product.

• Searching for Code: Billions of lines of code are freely available on the Internet, yet it is still very difficult for developers to effectively search this incredibly valuable resource for good examples, pieces of code to reuse, or simply inspiration. Dr. van der Hoek is exploring new paradigms, particularly seeking to replace inefficient keyword-based search engines with new search engines that help developers rapidly reformulate their queries so they can hone in on results of interest more quickly and more often.

• Crowdsourcing and Software Development: Lay persons making small but valuable contributions to large-scale problems has shown tremendous promise in all sorts of fields. Software development, however, poses a unique challenge for crowdsourcing because of its complex nature. Dr. van der Hoek is addressing this barrier through new ways of breaking down software development work, investigating how crowdsourcing might be used in debugging, programming, and even design. This work, in looking at software development in a fundamentally new way, has the potential to be a disruptive force, potentially reshaping the field for decades to come.