TIDEs Technostress-Aware Integrated Development Environments

Radan, Sasan (2026) TIDEs Technostress-Aware Integrated Development Environments. Doctoral thesis, Birmingham City University.

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Abstract

This thesis represents the culmination of several years of research into the intersection of mental wellbeing, technostress, and software design within programming environments. The work originated from a simple but important question: “Can the tools we use to code be designed to care for the people who use them?”. Throughout my academic and professional journey, I have observed how modern Integrated Development Environments (IDEs), despite their sophistication can often contribute to cognitive overload particularly for users learning to program. According to Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) data for the 2019/20 academic year, 7.7% of Computing undergraduates did not continue their studies after the first year, compared with 5.3% across all subjects [1]. Although student attrition is recognised as a multifactorial issue, the comparatively higher non-continuation rate within Computing provides contextual evidence that students in this discipline may experience distinctive academic and cognitive pressures. Within this broader context, programming-environment challenges and technostress-related factors may represent one possible contributing influence among several others affecting student engagement, performance, and continuation. Taken together, personal experience and sector-level data highlight that the challenges associated with programming environments are not anecdotal but form part of a wider pattern affecting computing students at scale. Despite increasing recognition of technostress in broader technological contexts, technostress within programming environments remains insufficiently examined as a measurable and design-addressable phenomenon. Technostress refers to the psychological strain and negative cognitive or emotional responses experienced as a result of interacting with information technologies, particularly when technological demands exceed an individual’s coping resources. It is commonly conceptualised through five primary stressors: techno-overload, where technology forces users to work faster or process excessive information; techno-complexity, where systems are perceived as difficult to understand or use; techno-insecurity, where users feel threatened about their competence or fear being replaced due to insufficient technical skills; techno-uncertainty, where constant updates or unclear system behaviour create instability and unpredictability; and techno-invasion, where technology intrudes into personal space, disrupts workflow, or creates a sense of constant connectivity. Developers, as implementers of change, often lack structured, feedback-driven methodologies that explicitly increase recognition of technostress in broader technological contexts, technostress within programming environments remains insufficiently examined as a measurable and design-addressable phenomenon. Consequently, a disconnect persists between users lived experiences of technostress and the structured mechanisms required to systematically translate those experiences into actionable design refinement within development environments. This observation formed the motivation for developing the Technostress-aware Integrated Development Environments (TIDEs) project: a research endeavour exploring how software design can be reimagined to support mental wellbeing, reduce technostress, and enhance user experience within programming contexts. The study unfolds across several core contributions. First, it establishes a taxonomy exploring the intersection between technostress, mental health, and assistive technology research to systematically synthesise and categorise it. Second, the taxonomy helps derive a set of derived metrics, performance, productivity, and satisfaction to measure the effects of design decisions on user’s technostress levels. Third, it operationalises these metrics an Iterative IDE Enhancement Framework, which facilitates integrating user feedback and biometric data to iteratively refine IDEs in ways that respond to emotional and cognitive needs with a particular focus on technostress. Within the scope of this work, the primary focus is on Integrated Development Environments, with designers and developers of these systems positioned as the primary users of the proposed contributions. Students are considered secondary users and beneficiaries, as the framework and dataset are intended to inform the design decisions that shape their programming experiences. Together, these contributions seek to move the conversation in computing beyond efficiency and functionality, towards a more human-centred vision of technology, one that recognises wellbeing as a critical component of effective design. In addition to the framework, the development and validation of the TIDE dataset provide an empirical foundation for this shift, offering structured emotional and interaction data that support evidence-based technostress-aware design and future affective computing research. Evaluating the framework, demographic factors such as gender, educational level, programming experience, and ethnicity significantly influenced user perceptions of the modified IDE. Additionally, the tailored modifications led to measurable improvements in performance, productivity, and satisfaction, reductions in technostress, with clear mappings between interface changes, user outcomes, and specific technostress triggers. These results offered a practical insight for designing more supportive and technostress-focused development environments that align with diverse user needs. As for the biometric data, key findings showed that positive emotional markers such as joy and engagement correlate with higher task success, while negative affect is linked to underperformance. Additionally, emotional trajectories improved under the modified IDE, suggesting that design interventions can reduce technostress. With TIDE dataset offering a unique foundation for researchers aiming to understand the role of technostress in digital environments and to build more technostress-aware IDEs. The evaluation phase, involving both professional developers and MSc User Experience Design participants, support that the proposed technostress-aware framework and the accompanying TIDE biometric dataset were perceived as credible, relevant, and complementary resources. The combined findings from Chapter 5 indicate that, when evaluated by their primary users and implementers, both the framework and the TIDE dataset were regarded as methodologically sound, practically applicable, and effective in supporting an evidence-based approach to identifying and mitigating technostress in programming environments.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Dates:	Date Event 26 June 2026 Accepted
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Technostress, Biometric, Programming, Integrated Development Environments, Affective Computing, Human Computer Interaction, Dataset, Wellbeing
Subjects:	CAH11 - computing > CAH11-01 - computing > CAH11-01-01 - computer science CAH11 - computing > CAH11-01 - computing > CAH11-01-04 - software engineering CAH11 - computing > CAH11-01 - computing > CAH11-01-05 - artificial intelligence
Divisions:	Architecture, Built Environment, Computing and Engineering > Computer Science Doctoral Research College > Doctoral Theses Collection
Depositing User:	Louise Muldowney
Date Deposited:	07 Jul 2026 12:08
Last Modified:	07 Jul 2026 12:08
URI:	https://www.open-access.bcu.ac.uk/id/eprint/17105

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