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Day four of seven draws to a close…

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Well, I have two questions completed and I’m about half way through the third. I’m getting to that place mentally where I just keep rearranging the text on the page, so that probably means at this point it’s just best if I step away and look at it with fresh eyes tomorrow. My hope is that I can finish this one tomorrow and start on my last one before the end of the day.

That said, I found out today I have some serious work for my job to get done tomorrow as well. If I can find time to do both then perhaps some of that serious work can blend into Wednesday and Thursday while still making enough progress on my papers to be done by Friday without having to take time off. Otherwise, the option is to bust my ass at work tomorrow to get about 3 days worth of work done in one and then take the next two off to work on my papers. Right now, I’m just too exhausted to think about it. Again – something to look at with fresh eyes in the morning.

I hope I’m not too optimistic about my progress so far. For now I’m just going to keep it on the down low so as to not jinx myself.

All right, my right eye is twitching. Time to go to bed.

Second Question Complete!

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I finished most of Q4, the second question of my exams that I chose to tackle, yesterday. I just had to do some reassessment and rewriting of it today. I’m starting my third question (Q2) tonight with hopes that I can finish it by tomorrow and then the last question I hope to finish by Wednesday. This way I can spend Thursday doing edits or padding (come all we all do it) to meet minimum expectations in time to turn them all in Friday by 10am.

We’ll see how the writing goes tonight. If I get enough done I’ll try not to take Wednesday or Thursday off. I may not have much of a choice for Thursday. It’s the day we are leaving for Dallas and the day before a holiday weekend, not like much work will be done that day anyway! 

Day Three

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Time to get this party started again! I got the twins up, bathed, dressed, and fed twice. Now they are down for a nap. The husband is also still asleep. The hope is they can all get up at the same time and enjoy each other’s company (instead of the grouch fest that was yesterday), while I bust out at least 1 if not 2 more answers.

I’m debating taking Wednesday and Thursday off so I can get this stuff finished. I already have Friday off for a holiday, but it does me no good as we are driving into see family on Thursday night (yay 12 hour road trip with twin infants!) and my exam papers are due by Friday morning at 10am.

It will all depend on how today goes, so let’s hope it goes well!

I have a cup of freshly brewed vanilla spice tea in hand and am donning my glasses (they are my academic disguise – and they help make sure my eyes don’t tire out too fast).

Go go super Solli!

And so it begins…

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This morning I got my list of 8 qualification exam questions of which I am to choose 4 to answer. At first it of course looks overwhelming, but I’d be disappointed if it didn’t. While I can’t discuss the exact content of the questions or my answers, I can discuss the process I go through to answer them and all of the real life stuff I have to deal with at the same time.

Like for example, should I leave the house to do this? Or, should I just barricade myself in my office (where I have all of the sudden noticed the lack of flat space on which to lay out materials), turn up my music, and try to get it done here.

I can say, for those who are interested, my questions focus on things like the interdisciplinarity of info sci, open source, virtual ethnography, and social informatics.

This entire process is wrapped up in a mess of excitement and anxiety. Oh and procrastination of course, but I only have a week to complete four papers that will determine whether or not I actually get to begin my dissertation process, so that really can’t last long. As I look around though, I have to say, my desk could use some tidying before I even try to start this madness…

Master’s completed, check! Onward to PhD!

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Wow, it’s been a while I know!

Master’s Completed!

On August 12 I presented my practicum / thesis to my anthropology department on the Fedora Project titled: An Exploration of the Fedora Project’s Online Open Source Development Community.

The unique part of my project was that I used virtual methods for almost the entirety of my research. The methods entailed the following:

  • Participant Observation In Person / Online
    • In Person
      • FUDCon Toronto
    • Online
      • Blogs / Fedora Planet
      • Twitter
      • IRC
      • Email / Mailing Lists
  • Qualitative Research
    • In-depth Semi-Structured Interviews based on data gathered during participant observation
      • Conducted via Email and IRC
  • Quantitative Research
    • Online Survey based on analysis of the Qualitative Data
      • Conducted using LimeSurvey

Based on the data gathered during this research I was able to structure my findings into five themes.

  1. Getting Started
  2. Turnover
  3. Collaboration
  4. Motivation
  5. Community

In the final report each of these themes had key points that surfaced to support them and recommendations that were made based on analysis of the data gathered throughout the entire research project. You can find the community version of this report here. If you would like the full thesis / practicum paper (a bit more academic than the community report), please email me: diana [@] cyber-anthro.com. If you would like me to give the presentation again, just let me know. I am more than happy to share this data with anyone in the Fedora / FLOSS / Anthropology or Academic communities.

My committee was very pleased with my work and the results of my research, which culminated in the previously mentioned final report and presentation. With that, they signed off on the last of my graduation requirements and on August 13th I graduated with my Master of Science in Applied Anthropology!

Virtual Methods Report

I am hoping to find time in the coming months to write up a report on how I approached my research from a virtual methods perspective and did everything virtually from taking down and organizing field notes to daily interactions within the community. Not to mention the trials and tribulations of doing a study like this and lessons learned for those who wish to embark on a similar path. If you think you’d find this useful, please email me and nudge me to get it done!

Onward to PhD!

Last year I applied and was accepted into the Interdisciplinary Information Science PhD (IIS PhD) program at UNT where I started this fall. I will be focusing my studies on Human Computer Interaction and Information Policy. Due to my academic record I was nominated for and subsequently awarded a fellowship that covers my full tuition for the next four years. I can’t tell you how excited I am to be continuing on with my PhD studies, daunting though they may seem right now!

While my PhD is not in anthropology, the program is heavily centered around research, which is where my anthropology background will be a huge benefit. I will be utilizing all of my anthropologist skills in each of my research projects and final dissertation. Being interdisciplinary, I am able to blend all of my previous education as well as my skills in information architecture, usability, interaction design, and user experience together into a combined subject of study.

I am very excited to start down this new path and my goal is to aim my studies on the same subjects I did for my undergraduate and masters degrees. Those being, gaming, social networking, blogging, online communities, and open source. My hope is to also extend this into the realms of the digital divide, digital property rights, net neutrality, information accessibility, and more!

Thank you Fedora & Red Hat

Thank you to each and every single one of you who worked with me on my Fedora research. Every single one of you made a difference and I hope we get the chance to work with each other again!

Finally almost two years later…

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From a direct email Best Buy sent me:

“Next time you’re at a Best Buy store you can conveniently get the product information you need right from your mobile phone. Learn more about specifications, ratings and reviews using the new QR Mobile Code Reader APP.

From a post I made December of 2008:

Two ads come to mind immediately of stores mentioning how they provide access to a computer right in the store in order to research the product and their competitors prices. I think though, that they should take this one step further, why not offer an in store wireless connection that mobile phones can use to do the research with. Through that connection offer a ‘homepage’ or default page that comes up when they go to connect with all of the in-store specials. These specials then list not only the store’s price, but also their competitors online prices as well as specs, compatibility, and upgrade information about the product itself.

While yes, I agree that few people will use this in the beginning, but imagine those people then SHARING that information with the people around them. Then those people the shared it with learning of it, using it, and then sharing it with others too. It’s an in store marketing device, one that they are already providing through the use of an in store computer, but one that is a bit more private and a hell of a lot more useful than most sales people.

This can then be extended even further than that — say using a barcode scanner or photo recognition software. Just imagine the possibilities when you put access to pertinent information in the palm of a consumers hand.

One example would be utilizing Target’s Amazon relation ship by putting URLs on the tags for all the electronic items in the store. Here I can go an extra step and actually read the reviews for the item I’m looking to purchase. I not only get to look up prices, specs, and other important information, but I also get to see what OTHER people think of the product too. Then, if I purchase it in store I can say perhaps get $5 off my next Amazon or Target purchase if I leave a review thus perpetuating the cycle.

Someone should pay me to come up with this stuff. I come up with these sorts of ideas all of the time!

(Yes this is a repost as I realized recently I had copied out the wrong paragraph from the BB email!)

My take on ‘Guerrilla Research’ as an anthropologist and UXD professional

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I’ve been avidly following a discussion on the anthro-design list about guerrilla research and thought that perhaps my reply as both a traditional researcher and a guerrilla researcher may be useful to those who follow my blog. So, here it is!

Little about me:

Academically, I am finishing my masters degree in applied anthropology in 3 weeks where I focused on cyber anthropology – or studying culture online and using virtual research methods (as long as everything goes according to plan). Additionally, I am starting my PhD in 4 weeks in Human Computer Interaction.

As far as work experience I have 13 years in the computer industry and over 10 years in the fields of software development (JCPenney internal marketing applications that serviced over 5000 internal employees and over 1000 stores), graphic design (various jobs over the years from traditional print to web design), and user experience including positions as interaction designer (school information systems), information architect (at an interactive ad agency), and user interface engineer (designing HR software) / designer (designing mobile, desktop and web tools).

My Experience:

In all of my experience I have rarely ever been able to properly conduct user research. Even the one time I was given the go ahead to do so the recruitment methods which were performed by the product management team were so awful we only had a total of 6 people participate!

This means I’ve had to utilize any opportunities available to me to conduct ‘guerrilla research’.

Methods I’ve used include:

‘Participant Observation’ – I sat in on and participated in training classes where support people were being trained on current versions of software and were able to voice their concerns for themselves and their customers. I was able to take this information plus a heuristic review of the software’s current state and use that as my basis for what challenges needed to be tackled in the new interface and process design.

Subject Matter Expert (SME) interviews. Here is where I went deeper than the stakeholders or even those that called themselves SMEs and ferreted out those people who had to be SMEs not because it was their job title, but because their positions within the company required them to be. I found a great source to be the Sales department (and sales engineers) of all people. Why? These people are the ones on the front lines trying to sell the software. They are the ones that do the most competitive research and are asked the most questions by both potential customers who are shopping around (so I saw in this demo by this other company they did it this way – why do you do it different?) AND existing customers looking to upgrade (so why should I upgrade to the new version when the version I have does everything I need it to – or the current version is no longer meeting my needs and I’m not sure the new version will either – why should I stay with your company when I need this, this, this and this that you have yet to offer). Additionally, these people are GREAT to reconnect with after you’ve done your job and they are selling the software you’ve designed as they can give you both potential and current user feedback on it that they receive during demos!

Developers, developers, developers… They get such a bad rep because they are seen as the ones that just do the behind the scenes plumbing and aren’t as concerned as how it should operate on the front end. This, for one, isn’t necessarily true and in most cases is a simply out dated notion. Though many aren’t sure what to do on the front end, once you give them prototypes or wireframes and actually talk to them about your ideas they can help you expound on them 10 fold because they know how the system works, why it works the way it does, the current pitfalls, and ways to not only improve the front end based on all of this information but also ways to improve the backend which also has implications for user experience especially in terms of things like errors and page loads etc etc.

Online forums! Getting out there and seeing what people are actually saying about previous/current state is a huge help. Though it can be damaging to the ego once they start talking about YOUR contributions to the project, it is definitely a place to gather at least unabashed criticism and sometimes helpful suggestions to the product.

Stakeholders – really, I go to these people last. Especially in terms of product managers. They have too many people to answer to, to be in the right mindset of user experience most of the time. Though I’m not their adversary, I look at myself as the user advocate and the person that has the user’s voice when things come up where they might want to sacrifice usability and accessibility needs for niceities/unnecessary features/timelines.

More traditional methods done in a guerrilla way:

Site visits – can’t stress this enough. Though we only got a chance to visit two offices, just being able to see the tools they work with (monitor size, the size of their browser windows, how busy their office is etc etc) were very insightful.

Phone interviews – these were most helpful when the user already answered a set of predetermined questions up front and the phone call was used to expound on them.

Journals – having users take screen shots of problem areas and talk about them prior to our visits or phone calls was very helpful in that it got them thinking about where their problem areas were and it saved us time in that we could jump right into issues they were experiencing in the WAY they were experiencing them even if we couldn’t be there to see how they got to the issue, why they got there, or how they had to satisfice their way around it at the time (and all previous times).

Card Sorting – we had several different types of people across two offices take a stack of cards with navigation points on it and asked them to sort them in what they would most navigate to in terms of top level navigation and where they’d classify the rest of the cards beneath that top level. This was very insightful and helped our client see that yes 13 top level super cats was a bit ridiculous.

Shadowing internal users – when you have the opportunity to develop for in-house clients shadowing them is one of the least obstructive and most informative research methods I’ve been able to perform.

Examples of work:

If you’re at all interested you can find out more about my work via my resume, and my portfolio, which doesn’t include anything from my current job – but you can see an example of the work I’ve done for them here.

Let me know if this was useful!

Research Results – Beta Release

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Hello again Fedora!

I know it’s been a while, and for that my apologies. But you see, I’ve been working very very hard this last month and a half to bring you the results of the research study we worked together on. I want to thank each and every one of you who worked with me on this study. By taking me in at FUDCon Toronto, letting me bug you insistently over email and IRC, and letting me pester you enough to take the survey – we’ve been able to create something both interesting and useful that I hope you find will be worth all that time and trouble.

For those who want to learn more about this research study you can start here at the beginning or you can browse the Fedora tag in my blog for relevant posts.

Without further adieu here is the beta version of this research in two forms both a PDF available for download so that you may share it or view it offline and an online version available here on my blog if that is your preference.

Why beta? Well, I feel this can perhaps be improved based on your feedback. I’ve already conducted an alpha release with those who directly contributed to the interview portion of the study. Now I am offering you all the chance to put your own mark on it. This document I am presenting here is after all for you Fedora contributors. So, if you have any questions or comments or feedback in general please let me know. You can either comment on here or you can email me directly diana [@] cyber-anthro.com.

I look forward to hearing from you!

And we have lift off!

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Survey Now Available:
I am hereby inviting all Fedora contributors to participate in my Fedora Research Survey by clicking on the banner below!

If you are not a Fedora contributor, please do not take the survey.

Survey Details:
All responses are anonymous, so please answer as honestly and thoroughly as you can! Only caveat is that you MUST be 18 years old or older to participate. It should only take 10 to 20 minutes to complete, unless you feel you have a lot to add to the open text areas, which from a researchers perspective, the more data the better!

Spread The Word!
Please repost this in your blogs or anywhere else you see fit!

Feel free to use the code below to incorporate the banner shown above:
<a href="http://cyberanthro.limequery.com/44899/lang-en" target="new"><img src="https://www.cyber-anthro.com/images/surveyresearchbanner.png"></a>

First Time Hearing Of This Research?
You can learn more about my research by viewing my introduction post to it here and the research FAQ I created here.

As always, if you have questions feel free to comment or contact me diana [@] cyber-anthro.com!

Go Fedora!
And of course a preemptive congrats to all your hard work on Fedora 13, only 8 days away!

Fedora: On Research Design

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Research design in anthropology is a tricky thing. It is the part of the process you do before you do anything else, and thus you do before you have any real sense of the situation in which you will be researching and the people with which you will be working. It is the place where you lay down the questions to be answered, setup ways in which you will attempt to answer them, try and anticipate all of the ins and outs of the process as well as all the steps necessary to be taken with all of the stakeholders, which in my case includes my client, my masters committee, and my university IRB.

Then you get into the project and start your research, and only then do you start to realize and understand what you’ve got yourself into and just how many things you didn’t anticipate. So far with this project, being a cyber anthropological based research study (all of the research is being conducted online), my problems have all centered around technology.

My first limitation was understanding the process to get my blog on the Fedora Planet blogroll. With help and some ‘hacking the system’ I got on and while at FUDcon I figured out why it didn’t work in the first place (I wasn’t a part of enough groups!).

Now I am realizing my second limitation, that of requiring a signed piece of paper from all interview participants before each interview can commence. Pen and paper is perhaps one of the oldest forms of communication and technology known to man and yet it is the one thing standing between me an several potential interviews.

This was not a hindrance I anticipated when designing my research study, and it is perhaps not something with which people who are not researching under a university have to deal. However, it is something I now realize is important and am bringing attention to in case there are others embarking on similar research studies with similar IRB limitations that require them to have signed consent forms so they can account for this process in their research design.

Were I to design a similar project in the future under the same IRB limitations, I would ask my IRB to approve an electronic encrypted signature on my consent forms.

Here’s to hoping someone out there can learn from my mistakes!

That all being said, if you have a means for returning a signed document to me electronically and you would like to be interviewed for the Fedora research project, but have yet to contact me please do so soon! All interviews will be wrapped up (as best they can) by Friday!

Fedora: Still looking for Interview Participants!

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If you would like to participate in the interview portion of the Fedora research project I am current conducting, please visit my informational post on it here!

I need at least 10 more willing participants by the end of next week. The most convenient way of participating for all involved so far has been through email. So if you have a little time and wouldn’t mind answering a few questions about your participation in Fedora via email, please let me know!

If you need alternative means of signing the informed consent documents, please note that you can sign it via a tablet as well as via fax (just email me for the fax number), rather than being restricted to having scan your forms in and send them to me.

Fedora Research Ahoy!

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I’m sitting here at my computer trying to figure out how to join the Fedora blogroll and notice that the hat I was given on Wednesday night by a friend is in fact, a fedora.

Today my research for my practicum has officially started. As soon as I get on the blog roll I’ll be posting some more in depth information as to what this study is about, what I hope to accomplish, and my side study meant to help other anthropologists as they attempt to do online community research.

I am very very excited about this project and can’t wait to share all of the details!

Also as a part of this I’ll be participating in NaBloPoMo. Here’s to post one of 30 for this month!


Visit NaBloPoMo

Research and Development 2.0 – Hire Anthropologists

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This comes from directly from Harvard Business:

Anthropologists and ethnographers. By having anthropologists study and interact with end-customers in their natural settings, Western firms can learn to tailor their business models and offerings to match users’ socio-economic and cultural context. For example, Intel’s People and Practices Research (PaPR) employs sociologists and ethnographers who spend months in emerging markets embedded in grassroots communities to identify the latent needs of local consumers. Dr Genevieve Bell, one of PaPR’s anthropologists, traveled extensively across China and India observing people in their homes to find out how they use and what they want from technology. Her ethnographic insights shaped Intel’s groundbreaking pricing models and partnership strategies for Chinese consumer market.

On that note, I’m proud to announce that I will be partnering with the Fedora Project for my practicum (an applied Masters thesis), where I will be performing exploratory research on their online open source development community. More details to come soon!

Podcasting and Paperwriting

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It’s been a while since I have updated! My apologies.

You see, I have been writing – a lot even. However, everything I have written has either been papers for class, or the script to my SXSW podcast. This is of course beyond my normal workload as a usability and interface engineer who works for a company that is pounding code on our next release, which has kept me very very busy as well!

While I cannot publish my SXSW podcast as it was accepted and will be published on the SXSW site in April/May, I can treat you to the results of my research and analysis completed last year for Motorola on how people extend their experiences through secondary devices. My particular part was focused on complex multiple engagements which is a combination of multitasking and quick succession of singular tasks made possible by the use of secondary screens / mobile devices.

You can download the PDF here.

An interesting trend…

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This semester I am taking Design Anthropology. I took this class as an undergrad and it is one of the reasons why I chose to pursue my masters in anthropology. The experience in working with a tech company, in both cases Motorola, on a real research issue where we go out and do field work and then as a class analyze the data, is simply amazing. This semester we researched how people extend their experiences through second screens or mobile devices.

I spoke at the beginning of the semester about how I use my iPhone (and previously Blackberry and before that Treo – I’ve had a smart phone since 2002). Several of the things I do include using it to share my immediate experience with my friends such as picture blogging (Twinkle for Twitter and Flickr to Livejournal), actual blogging, looking up information for class while listening to the lecture and participating in the discussion, and researching products in stores while in the store. This is all in addition to checking my email, chatting, texting, playing games (Spore at the moment), reading blogs, and using many other programs. The class looked back at me as if I was an alien. Most use their phone only for talking or at most texting. So, I made it my mission to actually find someone to do my fieldwork on that did the same thing I did.

And I did! I chose First Saturday, a tech swap meet, to do my research. I knew I’d find SOMEONE that did what I did there. And sure enough, my partner and I spotted someone at about 3am trying to buy a Macbook. What we found out was that during the half hour we observed him he used three phones, 2 Blackberries and 1 iPhone, to chat with his partner who was there with him (he had one Blackberry), look up prices, research the product itself, and research a technical problem the Macbook was experiencing. Aha! I am not the only one! This does, however, bring me to an interesting trend – on the spot researching, and stores seem to be cashing in on it.

Two ads come to mind immediately of stores mentioning how they provide access to a computer right in the store in order to research the product and their competitors prices. I think though, that they should take this one step further – why not offer an in store wireless connection that mobile phones can use to do the research with. Through that connection offer a ‘homepage’ or default page that comes up when they go to connect with all of the in-store specials. These specials then list not only the store’s price, but also their competitors online prices as well as specs, compatibility, and upgrade information about the product itself.

While yes, I agree that few people will use this in the beginning, but imagine those people then SHARING that information with the people around them. Then those people the shared it with learning of it, using it, and then sharing it with others too. It’s an in store marketing device, one that they are already providing through the use of an in store computer, but one that is a bit more private and a hell of a lot more useful than most sales people.

This can then be extended even further than that – say using a barcode scanner or photo recognition software. Just imagine the possibilities when you put access to pertinent information in the palm of a consumers hand.

One example would be utilizing Target’s Amazon relation ship by putting URLs on the tags for all the electronic items in the store. Here I can go an extra step and actually read the reviews for the item I’m looking to purchase. I not only get to look up prices, specs, and other important information, but I also get to see what OTHER people think of the product too. Then, if I purchase it in store I can say perhaps get $5 off my next Amazon or Target purchase if I leave a review thus perpetuating the cycle.

Nintendo sees the light letting you download demos of games right to your DS in some stores. Bookstores should jump on that letting you read reviews of the latest releases right on your mobile device, or go one step further by allowing you to download ebooks/zines after checking out the real thing. Giving people access right in the store to information as well as reviews and then allowing them to EASILY share their experience with others is, in my humble opinion, one of the great ways to bridge the gap between the brick and mortar stores and their thriving digital counterparts.

The trend has already begun. Stores are already giving people access to computers right there in the store to do this – it’s time someone started taking just a bit further.

/end being a dork, usability junky and ex advertising agency information architect…

p.s. My chapter for our report to Motorola is on Complex Multiple Engagements – think of it as an analysis of our observations on how people strive to do things simultaneously or in quick succession through the use of technology – then design implications based on my analysis of these observations.

Do you extend your experience with a mobile device?

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When attending an event such as a concert, a movie premier, a sports game, or a convention (or really anything else that can be considered an ‘event’) do you extend your experience there by using a mobile device in such a way as it pertains to the event you are attending (not distracting you from it but adding to it)?

If so, I’d like to know where you do this, what exactly it is you do, what do you do it with, and why you do it. It doesn’t have to be with a phone. It can be with any mobile input device (save for an actual laptop – though I’m not completely ruling this out yet). Feel free to comment or to email me [diana at cyber-anthro.com].

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