CHISE Lab

The mission of the CHISE group is to improve productivity of software engineers and information workers through an understanding of both the human experience and the technology around them. Most software is built by humans for humans and while the process for building, verifying and deploying software is continually increasing in complexity and automation, human factors in software engineering remain critical to the success of the project. The CHISE lab does research in the space of human computer interaction as well as more traditional software engineering to create processes, systems and tools that improve the lives of information workers.

Brendan and Jenna are the leaders of the CHISE lab, both working in Experiences + Devices as part of the engineering system team. Brendan has a rich history of working with Microsoft Research as well as DEC. His research has spanned many elements of the engineering process such as code ownership, organizational structure, defect prediction, reliability and security. He has been around enough to know humans and processes need to work together for the best results. Jenna has a background in bioinformatics, studying computer simulations of cancer. The interactions of many individual cells to produce complex secondary behavior is often mimicked in large scale software engineering, where the behavior of hundreds of engineers comes together to create something greater than the sum of its parts. Jenna loves interdisciplinary work – bridging organizational science, psychology, social science and technology – to study productivity and wellbeing in the tech world. Together, their very different backgrounds create a unique group with deep understanding of the technical and the human.

The CHISE lab collaborates with many research and product groups within Microsoft and academic institutions across the world. It is no coincidence that our lab name is very similar to the excellent The CHISEL Group (opens in new tab) at the University of Victoria. This is understandable as we have similar research goals. At Microsoft we are fortunate that the chair of the lab, Professor Margaret-Anne Storey (opens in new tab), is a long-term collaborator with ourselves and research and product groups across Microsoft, a number of their students have interned at Microsoft and some who have graduated have joined Microsoft. The other institute that we have a similar close collaboration with, is the equally excellent Realsearch Research Group (opens in new tab) at NCSU and their chair Laurie Williams (opens in new tab).