LSU is the flagship institution of Louisiana and is one of only 30 universities nationwide holding land-grant, sea-grant and space-grant status.

Since 1860, LSU has served its region, the nation, and the world through extensive, multipurpose programs encompassing instruction, research, and public service. The university brings in more than $150 million annually in outside research grants and contracts, a significant factor for the Louisiana economy.

Louisiana State University

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Most Influential Paper Award (10 Year Retrospective) International Concerence on Aspect-Oriented Software Development

Fred Fletcher Outstanding Program Volunteer Award, City of Raleigh

Top 5% of All Submissions CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Introduction to the Special Issue on Software-Intensive Autonomous Systems: methods and applications

Theories of Programming (Dagstuhl Seminar 22231)

Training industrial end‐user programmers with interactive tutorials

High-temperature gripper for collaborative robots in additive manufacturing

Block-based or graph-based? Why not both? Designing a hybrid programming environment for end-users

Human-Centered Software & End-User Programming

David Shepherd is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Louisiana State University. He earned his Ph.D. and M.S. in Computer Science at the University of Delaware, and his B.S. in Computer Science at Virginia Commonwealth University. David has since worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Computer Science at the University of British Columbia, built sweat equity as employee #9 at Tasktop Technologies, and risen to Senior Principal Scientist at ABB Corporate Research. His research has produced tools that have been used by thousands, innovations that have been featured in the popular press, and practical ideas that have won business plan competitions. Dr. Shepherd currently serves as the Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Systems & Software. His current work focuses on enabling end-user programming for industrial machines and increasing diversity in computer science.

Software Engineering

Robotics

Human Computer Interaction

CS Education

LSU Faculty Profile

Personal Website

Carrd Website

Google Scholar Citations

LSU professor leads groundbreaking research on using virtual reality in ADHD management

LSU professor using VR headsets, noise-canceling headphones to help students with ADHD focus

Technologies for interruptibility analysis and notification

Collaborative Research: Supporting Project-Based Learning in Undergraduate Software Engineering Courses

Developing of a Novel Virtual Reality Treatment for Emerging Adults with ADHD

Minoritized Youth Computer Science Learning, Belonging

Associate Professor

Modern offices are dominated by creative workers. Programmers, designers, analysts, and engineers. These creative workers need long blocks of time to tackle the cognitively demanding activities that their jobs require. Unfortunately, they are constantly interrupted via chat messages, drop-in visitors and notifications, causing stress and sapping their productivity. According to UC Irvine professor Gloria Mark each of these interruptions require an average of 23 minutes and 15s of recovery time.
 
To eliminate these distractions,we introduce FlowLight. FlowLight is an application that runs in the background on a user’s computer, automatically detecting when they are most focused and then changing their status accordingly. While the user is most active, FlowLight discourages remote interruptions by dynamically updating the user’s digital availability as well as discouraging local interruptions by changing the color status of the USB powered FlowLight Bulb.

To evaluate the FlowLight's effectiveness we partnered with the University of Zurich to perform an 18 month field study with over 400 participants from 12 different countries. This study showed that the FlowLight eliminated 46% of interruptions, that 85% of participants continued using it after the two month trial, and that users appreciated its impact, claiming that "[the FlowLight caused] less interruptions both in person and via Skype. [resulting] in more focus and ability to finish work."

Reducing interruptions with the FlowLight is just the first step in our work to redefine the modern workplace. Our ultimate mission is this: to foster flow at work.

Flowlight

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