obso1337.org

Last fall I applied to several universities to continue with a PhD in human-computer interaction (aka human-centered computing or user-centered design) with the intent of researching human factors and design issues in health informatics. I realised today that health informatics is only a professional interest and not something I want to spend the next many years of my life researching. Open source software is a huge part of my life and I don’t intend to put it on the back burner for a few years while I work on something else.

As a result, I am back to finding a university, program, or professor who has similar research interests (design/usability/methods in open source software) with plans to reapply to more appropriate universities this fall. The problem is, none of the HCI/HCC/UCD related programs I have found have labs, research projects, or professors interested in open source software. I’m back to square one and not sure where to begin my search.

So if any of you know of university programs focused on open source software research, professors with design and/or open source software interests, or even research labs or companies who would want to fund open source graduate research, please let me know.

seele :: May.28.2008 :: Academics, Design, General :: 17 Comments »

Gerry Gaffney of the UXpodcast interviewed me about my participation in Open Source and the Modified-Delphi Card Sort. I know these are two very unrelated projects, but I couldn’t resist being able to talk about Open Source!

The entire interview is about 25 minutes, with the first 8 minutes about usability in OSS. We had a bad Skype connection during the interview, so there are a few awkward spots that had to be heavily edited. Overall, Gerry did a wonderful job interviewing and made speaking very easy.

seele :: Dec.12.2007 :: Academics, Design, Open Source :: 1 Comment »

I finally completed the content draft for my graduate thesis. After I get a few eyes to read through it, it should be ready to be bound. I have a few more things to wrap up (one of them being Harry Potter 7 and a few work-related things I put of until this weekend) before I resurface and become a member of society.

This doesn’t mean I don’t have any projects already planned for the future, I will remain plenty busy:

• Wordpress contextual help (SoC project)
• Digikam usability report (months late)
• Object-based annotation research paper (for HCIL)
• A number of odds and ends kinds of things that make me the crazy person that I am

Cheers!

seele :: Jul.21.2007 :: Academics, Design, General :: 3 Comments »

It’s crunch time for my thesis. I have until the end of the week to get a content draft to my advisor to sign if I want to graduate this semester. For a while I thought I was on schedule because I had been putting a few hours a day in to it, but I’m beginning to feel the pressure as the last week begins to close. The statistics took a lot longer to report than I had thought which took up most of last week and the past weekend. I think today I will work on an easy section (like appendices) to let my brain rest.

All projects (other than day job related work) have been put on hold until this draft gets out.

More information about my thesis research

seele :: Jul.16.2007 :: Academics, Asides :: Comments Off

My IA Institute Process Grant report on Modified-Delphi card sorting is now available.

Abstract:

Open card sorting is a quantitative pre-­design method which is used by information architects to gather information from users to aid in the design of an information architecture. There are a number of drawbacks to the method, some severe enough to compromise the quality and validity of the results. A modified approach to open card sorting called Modified­Delphi Card Sorting is proposed, modeled after a forecasting technique called the Delphi method which has been used in business, military and technology knowledge gathering. Instead of independent participant results which must then be analyzed as a whole, the proposed method conducts the study centered around a single result structure which can be more easily analyzed. Participants independently work together through moderated collaboration to provide their individual insights and be assisted by other participants’ work. The method requires fewer participants for higher quality results which are more easily analyzed to produce material to aid in the design of an information architecture. A case study which was used to validate this method is also described.

Investigation of Applying the Delphi Method to a New Card Sorting Technique (PDF 740KB)

seele :: Jun.06.2007 :: Academics, Design, General :: No Comments »