Towards a project community approach to academic scientific software development

Academic scientific software development projects aim to provide valuable research tools to aid the scientific community in the process of discovery. The need for those tools to meet wider expectations of usability and good user experience design is critical to success; however the nature of academi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in2009 5th IEEE International Conference on E-Science Workshops pp. 120 - 124
Main Authors Loynton, S., Sloan, D., Burel, J.-M., Macaulay, C.
Format Conference Proceeding
LanguageEnglish
Published IEEE 01.12.2009
Subjects
Collaborative work
Design engineering
Educational institutions
Environmental management
Microscopy
Open source software
Programming
Software development management
Usability
User centered design
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Summary:Academic scientific software development projects aim to provide valuable research tools to aid the scientific community in the process of discovery. The need for those tools to meet wider expectations of usability and good user experience design is critical to success; however the nature of academic e-science software development projects means they are often constrained by too narrow an understanding of the potential user base, and a focus on development at the expense of broad user research. We introduce the concept of the project community as a way of addressing these limitations in capacity to support effective ¿user research¿ that informs and influences longer-term marketing and outreach strategy as well as supporting the development of usable and useful scientific software.
ISBN:9781424459469
142445946X
DOI:10.1109/ESCIW.2009.5407962