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This inevitably creates a gap between expectations and deliverables and creates a tension that is exacerbated by the lack of recognition for UI deliverables that arrive unaccompanied by code.

Another challenge in creating applications for academia is that many of the user goals are embedded in pedagogical methods that may be discipline specific or not expressed in a generalizable way. Instructional designers and faculty are rarely part of a development team. In the higher education community source environment we have an opportunity to remedy this. It may require reaching across local organizational divides to ensure that the user and instructional goals are adequately being met: Often, instructors don’t speak the language of technology, so the instructional designer can help translate, generalize, and communicate their needs. In turn, the instructional designer often doesn’t speak the language of the application programmer, and the UI designer can help translate and represent their needs within the design and work flow of the application for the developers. This diagram attempts to express the relationship between these different areas of expertise.

The transparency of open source projects in higher education helps development and instructional support teams engage faculty and students in the process of creating the online environment that they need. We are uniquely situated smack dab in the middle of our own usability lab. There are few commercial or open source environments that can count themselves as this lucky. One of the biggest barriers to implementing a user centered design process that I have heard from UI Designers working in the private sector is their inability to gain consistent access to their users. Let’s make the most of our opportunity!

Flexibility of oss

One of the largest benefits of open source software can also be a sizable UX challenge. The ability to easily localize and change the code means that often development teams and users don’t have a common or consistent experience and it is difficult to conduct user testing. On the one hand, proprietary products with closed code won’t let us make the experience more meaningful to our users, but on the other, with open source we have the unique opportunity to make a mess of it! An instance of uPortal at UBC may be completely different from uPortal at Yale. So how do we conduct usability tests? This issue is something that the Fluid Project is exploring now as it prepares for its first round of “ user experience walk-throughs” on Sakai, Moodle, and uPortal . They have designed a set of protocols that are already being utilized by other community source projects.

User-friendly architectures and technologies

Users of Open Source software are not only the end-users, they are also the designers, administrators, and implementation teams (hence documentation is also a huge barrier in OSS). When designing open source applications or platforms, making the software usable for these users is also important. In the case if UI designers, choosing presentation layer frameworks which are compatible with standard mark-up languages is important. The Fluid Project is working across projects, attempting to identify user interactions that cross academic software and develop accessible open source UI components that will be mapped to design patterns ( (External Link) , (External Link) . For site administrators and integration teams, documentation and set-up wizards will be key. Design patterns for these activities should be able to also be mapped to reusable components and documentation templates.

Questions & Answers

A golfer on a fairway is 70 m away from the green, which sits below the level of the fairway by 20 m. If the golfer hits the ball at an angle of 40° with an initial speed of 20 m/s, how close to the green does she come?
Aislinn Reply
cm
tijani
what is titration
John Reply
what is physics
Siyaka Reply
A mouse of mass 200 g falls 100 m down a vertical mine shaft and lands at the bottom with a speed of 8.0 m/s. During its fall, how much work is done on the mouse by air resistance
Jude Reply
Can you compute that for me. Ty
Jude
what is the dimension formula of energy?
David Reply
what is viscosity?
David
what is inorganic
emma Reply
what is chemistry
Youesf Reply
what is inorganic
emma
Chemistry is a branch of science that deals with the study of matter,it composition,it structure and the changes it undergoes
Adjei
please, I'm a physics student and I need help in physics
Adjanou
chemistry could also be understood like the sexual attraction/repulsion of the male and female elements. the reaction varies depending on the energy differences of each given gender. + masculine -female.
Pedro
A ball is thrown straight up.it passes a 2.0m high window 7.50 m off the ground on it path up and takes 1.30 s to go past the window.what was the ball initial velocity
Krampah Reply
2. A sled plus passenger with total mass 50 kg is pulled 20 m across the snow (0.20) at constant velocity by a force directed 25° above the horizontal. Calculate (a) the work of the applied force, (b) the work of friction, and (c) the total work.
Sahid Reply
you have been hired as an espert witness in a court case involving an automobile accident. the accident involved car A of mass 1500kg which crashed into stationary car B of mass 1100kg. the driver of car A applied his brakes 15 m before he skidded and crashed into car B. after the collision, car A s
Samuel Reply
can someone explain to me, an ignorant high school student, why the trend of the graph doesn't follow the fact that the higher frequency a sound wave is, the more power it is, hence, making me think the phons output would follow this general trend?
Joseph Reply
Nevermind i just realied that the graph is the phons output for a person with normal hearing and not just the phons output of the sound waves power, I should read the entire thing next time
Joseph
Follow up question, does anyone know where I can find a graph that accuretly depicts the actual relative "power" output of sound over its frequency instead of just humans hearing
Joseph
"Generation of electrical energy from sound energy | IEEE Conference Publication | IEEE Xplore" ***ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7150687?reload=true
Ryan
what's motion
Maurice Reply
what are the types of wave
Maurice
answer
Magreth
progressive wave
Magreth
hello friend how are you
Muhammad Reply
fine, how about you?
Mohammed
hi
Mujahid
A string is 3.00 m long with a mass of 5.00 g. The string is held taut with a tension of 500.00 N applied to the string. A pulse is sent down the string. How long does it take the pulse to travel the 3.00 m of the string?
yasuo Reply
Who can show me the full solution in this problem?
Reofrir Reply
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Source:  OpenStax, The impact of open source software on education. OpenStax CNX. Mar 30, 2009 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col10431/1.7
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