Research projects this community would be interested in

Design Lounge Communication and collaboration
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A research or design project idea that I sometimes run into in the context of open source in design is how a “github for designers” should be build or how developer/designer communication can be improved. Both topics are rather broad and similar research has been done already. But it is understandable that students or professors are interested in FOSS and design and it is understandable that these are first plausible ideas.

I wonder what suggestions from the community would be? What is research that you would be interested in?

(When suggesting topics, keep in mind that it needs to be interesting as a research project for an academic community and it needs to be doable, so actually building the “github for designers” is usually out of question anway – but smaller ideas might be realized at least prototypically. Some examples of research in FOSS/Design in the past are listed here

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Some ideas I had:

  • A qualitative analysis of artist/developer collaboration at Blender
  • Use of mockups/wireframes in different open source teams (comparing 2 or 3 projects, quali, quant or mixed methods)
  • “Donate a video”: How to collect examples of end user usage practices of websites in a privacy savvy way (Build a prototype, evaluate)
  • How members of open source communities think about newcomers to their communities (Interviews or analysis of conversations on mailinglists)
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I will add:

  • Understanding project barriers for newcomers to Open Source projects (and how to remove them. E.g.: the need to read extensive threaths and conversations.
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