[cse491] [ctb at msu.edu: CSE seminar: Open user experience design. Friday, 11am]

[C. Titus Brown]

should be an interesting and accessible talk -- come!  donuts!

----- Forwarded message from "C. Titus Brown" <ctb at msu.edu> -----

Date: Thu, 19 Nov 2009 05:07:04 -0800
From: "C. Titus Brown" <ctb at msu.edu>
To: eng_all at egr.msu.edu, eng_grads at egr.msu.edu
Subject: CSE seminar: Open user experience design.  Friday, 11am

Open UX design: finding user research in the crowd

Dr. Paula Bach

Date: November 20th, 2009
Time: 11:00am
Location: 3105 Egr (CSE conference room) 

Free/Libre/Open Source software (FLOSS) development communities have
revolutionized the way software is produced. As of yet, very few FLOSS
communities have revolutionized user experience (UX) design but more are
integrating UX practices. In this talk I present a research space that aims to
investigate three key areas of understanding and improving usability and UX in
open source projects. The key areas include understanding contributions to UX
made from developers, users, and UX designers. Because the socio-technical
environment of FLOSS projects is unique, including the  distributed nature of
collaborations, and crowdsourcing design ideas, new ways of understanding UX
work are needed. I will present summaries of two studies and a new space
currently in its nascent stages of investigation. One study intended to open up
the socio-technical gap for UX in FLOSS specifically addressing the
participation of UX designers while the other characterized UX practices in two
FLOSS projects. The new space includes finding, understanding, and making use
of information found in open source design discussions for understanding user
needs and user research.

Bio and background: 

Paula Bach is a postdoctoral research associate at The University of Illinois
Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS). Bach is an
NSF-funded Computing Innovation Fellow. This highly-competitive program seeks
to identify the most promising new PhDs in computing and informatics and retain
them in research and teaching in order to support intellectual renewal and
diversity in the computing fields at U.S. organizations. She is one of the 11
percent of successful applicants to the program.

 

Bach completed her thesis, "Supporting the User Experience in Free/Libre/Open
Source Software (FLOSS) Development" working in the Computer Supported
Collaborative Learning Lab and Penn State Center for HCI under the direction of
Jack Carroll, Edward M. Frymoyer professor of information Sciences and
Technology.

She is working at GSLIS with Professor Michael Twidale to continue and extend
her research on ways in which sociotechnical solutions can foster participation
from HCI professionals and HCI-interested users as well as investigating other
ways to make FLOSS more usable.

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----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
C. Titus Brown, ctb at msu.edu