Polly - At Coventry Uni Design Institute we are working on a AHRB small research grant to evaluate the applicability of design research methods to software development. In particular we are using a set of video and speech protocols that have been previously developed (Rianne Valkenberg) to analyse the 'out loud' thinking of teams of industrial designers, but adapting it to individual software authors The methodology is rooted in Donald Schon's ideas that define professional and high level thinking in terms of 'reflective practice'.
My colleague Andree Woodcock is up on that side of things - I am sure she would be interested to hear from you. I have been mainly organising recorded sessions for software authors. We set them the task of designing and programming a simple graphical 'sheep dog' game in three hours, though of course they cannot complete the task in such a short time. Also, the project is encouraging experienced software authors to write about their software design/programming experience. These are on the project website www.softwareauthorship.com - (a couple of my essays is all that's on right now, and there isn't much on about the protocol analysis at the moment, but you may find it of some interest). We are promoting the idea that there is much craft and design technique in software authorship (solo programming). I would even say that "extreme programming" is a watered down version of software authorship! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PPIG Discuss List ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Discuss admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/discuss Announce admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/announce PPIG Discuss archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40ppig.org/
