Wiki source code of Assignment 1 - Zac Taschdjian

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 1: #info('Very nice work. Next time, please link to your assignment from your profile page!')
 2: 
 3: *Human, Computer Interaction*
 4: HCI (or CHI, if the "computer" is given preference over the "human") is the interdisciplinary study of how technology, specifically computers, mediate human interactions with data.  It encompasses a number of fields including computer science, anthropology, psychology, education, design and engineering.  My personal areas of interest within HCI are tangible interface development (http://tangible.media.mit.edu/) and socio-digital systems (especially Microsoft Research's efforts, http://research.microsoft.com/sds/). 
 5: 
 6: *Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW)*
 7: The use of computers in collaborative group work environments.  Specifically, the design of computer systems and interactions to facilitate work.  I'm interested in how CSCW impacts complex problem solving in distributed groups of people, especially in open source software design.  How, for example, are social hierarchies influenced by participation in distributed collaborative work environments?  Common experience would suggest that small groups often tend to be dominated by a few people leading to unequal information sharing. 
 8: DiMicco, J., Pandolfo, A., Bender, W. Influencing Group Participation with a Shared Display. http://web.media.mit.edu/~joanie/second-messenger/cscw04-dimicco.pdf
 9: 
10: *Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL)*
11: Another way to collaboratively facilitate group knowledge.  It is closely related to CSCW and often, though not always, applied to web-based distance learning.  It can have a classroom component (Ryokai, K., Vaucelle, C., Cassell, J.  Virtual Peers as Partners in Storytelling and Literacy Learning.) http://www.media.mit.edu/gnl/publications//jcal_ryokai_vaucelle_cassell.final.doc.PDF
12: Of particular interest for me is Gerry Stahl's work around group meaning making and collaborative knowing.  (Stahl, 2006).
13: *
14: Design of Interactive Systems*
15: A user-centered design methodology which focuses on creating usefulness and usability in interactive systems.  This is in contrast to systems designed with little regard for users and their actual needs or contexts.  Software teams creating these systems would require collaboration with users to translate user tasks into functionality.  Technical challenges might include the creation of a useful product without reducing functionality.  
16: http://www.interactionarchitect.com/knowledge/article19991111shd.htm
17: *
18: Participatory Design*
19: A design doctrine that involves users in the design process.  Sometimes viewed as a means of empowerment, participatory design differs from user-centered design in that users are considered true stakeholders capable of making decisions.  The distinction between designers and users is somewhat blurred; designers become facilitators of the design process while users are more like subject matter experts in their respective areas.  The idea stems in part from Donald Schon's concept of the "reflective practitioner".  
20: http://cpsr.org/issues/pd/introInfo/ 
21: Nielsen, 1993.  
22: 
23: *User Modeling*
24: An approach to usability that acknowledges that there is no single platonic ideal of a "user".  Aspects such as ability level, learning style, personality and other psycho-social traits will determine a users ability to use a product or service.  Help features such as Windows' wizards posit an adaptive user model which (supposedly) take into account specific user personas.  
25: http://www.otal.umd.edu/uuguide/wmk/
26: 
27: *Usability Design in Virtual Organizations creating open source software*
28: The relatively recent shift from an economy based on the production of manufactured goods to one based on information has brought collaborative, networked production into the economic mainstream.  (Benkler, 2006)  Many entities (I hesitate to say "businesses") exist as virtual organizations that are engaged in networked activities ranging from wikis to social networking sites to open source software development.  While geographically distributed teams working in many fields are commonplace, the open source model is, by definition, a diverse and far-flung group of developers.  Convincing arguments (and common sense) hold that interdependent tasks are greatly aided by collocation.  (Finholt, et. al.).  Unlike collocated groups, however, distributed teams and virtual organizations alike face a host of complications.  With a few possible exceptions, virtual organizations are often highly complex.  As such, they have many stakeholders with widely diverse interests, abilities, motivations and levels of commitment.  (Mirel, 2004).  Additionally, they often form to address complex problems or design issues (such as software design) which themselves have many layers of complexity.  
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30: To adequately address these issues requires a broadly interdisciplinary approach since the topic itself doesn't fall neatly into a single discipline.  Besides the group dynamics, psychology and personal incentives of the individuals involved, the enabling technology is of primary importance.  While I believe the social and technological aspects of virtual organizations are intimately linked, I will concentrate on only one aspect which bridges both to some degree; usability.  
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32: Traditional usability guidelines were developed for proprietary software; they do not, to my knowledge have any empirically based link to open source development.  (Nielsen, 1993)
33: 
34: Broadly, the issue of usability in the open source world can be framed around the convergence of two related areas; participatory design and the user-centered design movement.  (Nichols and Twidale, 2003).  The only guidelines I've located relating to usability in OSS were created by the usability team for the GNOME project.  A cursory reading suggests that these guidelines are intended to make GNOME accessible, flexible and intuitive; the main goals of Nielsen's usability goals as well.  They do not appear to be a significant reworking of traditional usability and do not satisfactorily address the following issues.  
35: 
36: All of this points to a few underlying issues with usability in open source design that are based largely on supposition and anecdotal evidence.  First is the assumption that those who participate in open source projects fall on the "expert" end of the continuum of users and cannot effectively engage in participatory design that benefits less experienced users.  Additionally, anecdotal evidence suggests that participants in open source projects tend to align more with a "hacker" mentality rather than as "designers"; a mindset that enjoys solving programming challenges, but not necessarily making a tool more usable.  Further, the marketing of open source projects appears to be biased toward programmers and has difficulty attracting usability experts.   
37: It would appear at first glance that methods to make the process more self consciously participatory; attracting a wider variety of contributors would help alleviate usability problems.  Finally the incentive structure for participants appears to favor the inclusion of more features and discourages the subtraction of features.  This could have a detrimental influence on usability because less usable features would not be discarded due to the participants unwillingness to "judge" the work of their fellow contributors.  
38: 
39: Despite these issues, there are many examples of highly successful open source products that routinely out compete proprietary tools.  The question I would like to address is how this is accomplished.
40: 
41: 
42: Benkler, Y. (2006) The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and
43: Freedom, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.
44: 
45: Finholt, T., et. al. (2008) CSCW Workshop: Supporting Distributed Teamwork. http://conway.isri.cmu.edu/~jdh/VRC-2008
46: 
47: GNOME Usability Study Report: Usability Principles (2001)
48: http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/ut1_report/ui_principles.html
49: 
50: Mirel, B. (2004) Interaction Design for complex problem solving. Morgan Kaufman Publishers, San Francisco.
51: 
52: Nichols, D. and Twidale, M.  (2003) The Usability of Open Source Software.  First Monday, volume 8, number 1 (January 2003),
53: http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue8_1/nichols/index.html
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