Building software by rolling the dice ↗︎
✦ ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award
How do people actually build with AI? Exploring prompting, trust, and the uncertainty of vibe coding.
PH.D. CANDIDATE / UC IRVINE
Yi-Hung Chou.
I’m a mixed-method researcher studying how people create software.
I use to understand experiences in depth, and to reveal hidden insights at scale.
My work brings together software engineering and human-computer interaction to help software creators collaborate, build, and have fun.
Select a method to explore the research it illuminates.
More about me ↗︎LIGHT CONTROLLER Choose your spotlight
Illuminate the entire workspace: people, software, and a swarm of AI agents.
RESEARCH / THREE SPOTLIGHTS
Human-AI collaboration,
across the workspace.
Explore how people, software, and AI agents interact, including task switching, agent coordination, and collaboration across roles.
RESEARCH / WORK & PROJECTS
Research opportunities ↗︎Professional software workers with coding agents ↗︎
We are studying how, why, and when professionals outside traditional developer roles use coding agents at work, and how they collaborate with developers on their teams.
Join this project ↗︎Managing AI agents: a workspace shadowing study ↗︎
A workspace shadowing study of the interleaving nature of working with AI agents: how software creators switch between tasks and agents, and the challenges and opportunities of managing a swarm of AI agents.
LATEST / NEWS
A few updates.
Our follow-up to Learning from Mistakes, Following Breadcrumbs in Code, has been accepted to Empirical Software Engineering (EMSE)! It extends our study of ad-hoc logs to Java, JavaScript, and Python.
Read the paperBuilding Software by Rolling the Dice was selected for an ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award at FSE 2026. It is one of 10 distinguished papers among 211 accepted research papers.
Read the paperHappy to share that our paper FSE 2026 Building Software by Rolling the Dice: A Qualitative Study of Vibe Coding have been accepted! See you all in Canada (AGAIN)!
Read the paperI’m thrilled to share that I have been awarded the Taiwan Government Scholarship to Study Abroad ($32,000)!
Excited to announce that our paper MSR 2025 Learning from Mistakes: Understanding Ad-hoc Logs through Analyzing Accidental Commits has been accepted! See you all in Ottawa, Canada!
Read the paperDelighted to share that our paper Organize, Then Vote: Exploring Cognitive Load in Quadratic Survey Interfaces (CHI 2025) has been accepted! Huge thanks to Ti-Chung Cheng for driving this work forward!
Read the paperI will join the PEACH Lab at ETH Zürich for a research exchange from September to November 2024, working with Prof. April Wang!
Interested in undergraduate research? Please see the research opportunity page for current projects and relevant skills. Students from any major are welcome to get in touch. Email me with a short introduction, your interests, and what motivates you to work together. Looking forward to your emails!
I am excited to share that I will join UIST as student volunteer this year. see you all at San Francisco!
I am excited to share that I will be interning with the SAP, Newport Beach this summer with Prof. Tobias Schimmer!
Congrats! Zhendong is officially Dr. Zhendong Wang!
Enjoy Maui! at HICSS
Related HICSS paperUsually thinking over coffee ☕02 / THE PERSON BEHIND THE RESEARCH
A little about me.
I’m a Ph.D. candidate in Software Engineering at UC Irvine, advised by Prof. James A. Jones. As a mixed-method researcher, I work at the intersection of software engineering and human-computer interaction to help software creators collaborate, build, and have fun.
I received my B.Sc. in Computer Science through the ELITE stream at The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2019, and earned my Master of Science in Software Engineering at UC Irvine in 2023.
Throughout my academic journey, I have benefited from the guidance and mentorship of Prof. April Wang, Prof. Grace Yen, Prof. David Redmiles, Prof. Rafael Prikladnicki, Prof. Tobias Schimmer, and Prof. Steven Dow.
My intellectual curiosity has been shaped by Ti-Chung Cheng, who inspired me to leave a stable career in software engineering for the dynamic and unpredictable world of academia.
If you’re interested in working with me as an undergraduate researcher, please see the current research opportunities. Students from any major are welcome to get in touch. Email me with a short introduction, your major, and what motivates you to work together. I look forward to hearing from you!
UC Irvine MS, Software Engineering · 2023CUHK BSc, Computer Science · 2019
03 / PUBLICATIONS
Ideas, in print.
Empirical Software Engineering (EMSE) , Accepted
Read ↗︎Following Breadcrumbs in Code: What Accidentally Committed Ad-Hoc Logs Reveal about Developer Comprehension
FSE
Read ↗︎Building Software by Rolling the Dice: A Qualitative Study of Vibe Coding
✦ ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award
04 / LET’S CONNECT
Good research starts
with a conversation.
Interested in collaboration, research, or a coffee chat?
I’d love to hear what you’re thinking about.