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Improving Android App Responsiveness through Search-Based Frame Rate Reduction

Callan, J; Petke, J; (2021) Improving Android App Responsiveness through Search-Based Frame Rate Reduction. In: Search-Based Software Engineering. SSBSE 2021. (pp. pp. 136-150). Springer: Cham, Switzerland. Green open access

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Abstract

Responsiveness is one of the most important properties of Android applications to both developers and users. Recent survey on automated improvement of non-functional properties of Android applications shows there is a gap in the application of search-based techniques to improve responsiveness. Therefore, we explore the use of genetic improvement (GI) to achieve this task. We extend Gin, an open source GI framework, to work with Android applications. Next, we apply GI to four open source Android applications, measuring frame rate as proxy for responsiveness. We find that while there are improvements to be found in UI-implementing code (up to 43%), often applications’ test suites are not strong enough to safely perform GI, leading to generation of many invalid patches. We also apply GI to areas of code which have highest test-suite coverage, but find no patches leading to consistent frame rate reductions. This shows that although GI could be successful in improvement of Android apps’ responsiveness, any such test-based technique is currently hindered by availability of test suites covering UI elements.

Type: Proceedings paper
Title: Improving Android App Responsiveness through Search-Based Frame Rate Reduction
Event: SSBSE 2021: The 13th Symposium on Search-Based Software Engineering
Dates: 11 October 2021 - 12 October 2021
ISBN-13: 978-3-030-88105-4
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-88106-1_10
Publisher version: ttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88106-1_10
Language: English
Additional information: This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions.
Keywords: Genetic Improvement, Search-Based Software Engineering, Responsiveness, Android, Mobile Applications
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Computer Science
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10136857
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