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Free Interaction Design - take part?

Posted: Sat Aug 21, 2010 12:09 pm
by onli
Have a look at this offer to free projects. A professor searching for open source projects, offering:
You will receive a usability evaluation and/or mockups and suggestions for improving your interface from an interaction designer in-training! What you choose to do with that data is up to you, but please consider it seriously!
Do we want to take part, let evaluate the system, the admin-interface or bulletproof in the frontend? I'm convinced it could only help :)

Re: Free Interaction Design - take part?

Posted: Sat Aug 21, 2010 1:59 pm
by garvinhicking
Hi!

of course, that would only help! :) I remember a project site for this, were s9y participated and we put much effort into coordination. But nothing ever came out of it, so I'm a bit low-spirited by the success of this.

But I'd be all for going that route, is there anybody who'd like to help with coordination? :)

Regards,
Garvin

Re: Free Interaction Design - take part?

Posted: Sat Aug 21, 2010 7:40 pm
by onli
Of course I would help coordinate :)

It'd be important that don or yellow are involved in this.

Re: Free Interaction Design - take part?

Posted: Sat Aug 21, 2010 7:58 pm
by Don Chambers
Like Garvin, I seem to remember going down a similar path once before. I am concerned about the very real possibility of being asked to change something from a usability perspective but being unable to do it for whatever reason. It seems possible that we could have legitimate reasons to be unwilling, or unable, to implement possible suggestions.

Having said that, I would be willing to be involved as much as necessary as long as I have partners in crime! :mrgreen:

Re: Free Interaction Design - take part?

Posted: Sat Aug 21, 2010 8:07 pm
by yellowled
onli wrote:It'd be important that don or yellow are involved in this.
I have, like, no time at all right now. ("Right now" being a flexible period of time over the next 2-8 weeks.) Meaning I could chime in on this but definitely not "respond to students in a timely manner".

YL

Re: Free Interaction Design - take part?

Posted: Sun Aug 22, 2010 4:07 pm
by onli
Ok. Sounds like it could work.

Garvin, do you want to contact them or shall I?

Re: Free Interaction Design - take part?

Posted: Sun Aug 22, 2010 6:35 pm
by garvinhicking
Hi onli!

I'd be very happy if you'd contact them on behalf of our small team? :-)

Regards,
Garvin

Re: Free Interaction Design - take part?

Posted: Sun Aug 22, 2010 8:46 pm
by onli
Done. But the course-website is already online with some quite big project. Well, we'll see what happens.

Re: Free Interaction Design - take part?

Posted: Thu Aug 26, 2010 5:06 pm
by onli
Short update: Got a nice and detailed mail from the initiator, explaining that the students will select one of the projects and serendipity will be among the possible choices. He sounded really glad to hear from a blogengine, till now s9y is the only one which wanted to take part :)

Something I want to quote:
While I have taught this kind of course before, it is the first time I've experimented with putting it in the context of a living, open source project. That said, I want to be clear: I'm well aware of how open source software development works, and the students will be, too. We do not believe our contributions will *necessarily* result in changes in your project. We only ask for the opportunity to work in a community context where the students' explorations will not come as a surprise, and their work will be given a bit of consideration along the way. And who knows: they might decide to keep working on the project past the end of the term, which I would consider a win for all involved!
If a student chooses to work with us, we can expect him by mid-to-late September.