Brad A. Myers, professor in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute, will be honored for the second year in a row as the author of a Most Influential Paper at the IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, (VL/HCC). He is the first person to win the award twice since it was established in 2008.

Myers and his co-authors — former students Andrew Ko, the first author, is now an assistant professor at the University of Washington, and Htet Htet Aung, now a principal user experience designer at Harris Healthcare Solutions in the Washington, D.C., area — will receive the Most Influential Paper award at VL/HCC 2013, Sept. 15-19 in San Jose, Calif. The symposium is the premier international forum for research on how computation can be made easier to express, manipulate, and understand.

Their 2004 paper, "Six Learning Barriers in End-User Programming Systems," focused on barriers to learning programming skills beyond the programming languages themselves. Their study of beginning programmers identified six types of barriers: design, selection, coordination, use, understanding, and information. This deeper understanding of learning challenges, in turn, supported a more learner-centric view of the design of the entire programming system.

Last year, Myers won the award for co-authoring a widely cited article, "Using HCI techniques to design a more usable programming system," that examined the process used to develop a programming system for children.