FLOSS projects – The Season of Usability – June 1 to August 31- Season of Usability 2009 – Open Source Projects

Posted by Jeyanthan in Workshop on May 15th, 2009 | no responses

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The OpenUsability Season of Usability will be supporting 10 students to work on 10 open source projects. The Season of Usability is a series of sponsored student projects to encourage students of usability, user-interface design, and interaction design to get involved with Free/Libre/Open-Source Software (FLOSS) projects.

About

Season of Usability is a series of sponsored student projects to encourage students of usability, user-interface design, and interaction design to get involved with Free/Libre/Open-Source Software (FLOSS) projects.

Inspired by Google’s Summer of Code™, OpenUsability offers sponsored student projects. Other than the Google projects that address developers, they aim at students of usability, user-interface design, and interaction design. Students experience the interdisciplinary and collaborative development of user interface solutions in international software projects while getting into OSS development.

The idea of the student projects is to establish a close collaboration between the student, a key developer from the software project (technical mentor) and a usability mentor. Students learn how to develop design solutions in agreement with the whole team to learn how to obtain solution-oriented results. During a cooperation that spans several months, students closely work together with experienced professionals and get insights in to their way of work.

Learn more about successes from Season of Usability in our Success Stories.

Student Requirements

* You must be an undergraduate or graduate level student enrolled at a College or University as of January 1 2009. (Recent graduates are eligible to apply)
* You must be a student of design, usability, human factors or other HCI-related major. Computer science and information systems students who are interested in applying must have had at least one course in human factors, user interface design, or human-computer interaction.
* Students from any country are eligible to apply; however, some English skills are necessary.
* You must be able to dedicate 10-15 hours a week to work on your project. This time requirement may vary from week to week depending on your project activities and responsibilities.
* After successful completion of your project and a satisfactory rating from your mentors, you will receive a $1000 USD stipend for your work.
* You are not required to have knowledge of a programming language, nor will there be programming requirements to the internship.

How to apply:

* Review the available projects and decide which project you would like to apply to.
* Prepare a résumé or curriculum vitae with relevant education, work, and open source experience.
* Prepare a single page cover explaining why you would like to work with your chosen project
* All materials must be submitted in Open Document Format (ODF) or Adobe’s Portable Document Format (PDF).
* Send your documents to students@openusability.org by May 20 2009. Please include the name of the project you are applying to in the email Subject.
* If you would like to apply to more than one project, please send separate application packages.

2009 Season of Usability: Call for Projects

OpenUsability Season of Usability is a series of sponsored student projects to encourage students of usability, user-interface design, and interaction design to get involved with Free/Libre/Open-Source Software (FLOSS). During a 3 month collaboration, students work together with an experienced usability mentor and key developers of the project to improve the user experience of a FLOSS application. The next Season of Usability student projects will start in May 2009.

FLOSS Projects who would like to benefit from a usability student are encouraged to fill in our Call for Projects:

» Season of Usability 2009 – Call for Projects (available until April 15th)

How does Season of Usability work?

After the Call for Projects is finished (April 15th), the usability mentors will get back to the FLOSS projects and start the selection process. Each mentor will decide for one project – based on the need for usability and the availability of a technical mentor in the project, and if a good task can be defined. Examples of successful Season of Usability tasks can be found on the Season of Usability website.

The selected projects are published and students start to apply for them. Together with the technical mentor, a student is selected. In a kickoff meeting, the task scope is further defined and a road map is developed. Then, the actual project work begins (also see the time frame below).

How can I register a project?

We prepared a short questionnaire to register a project. We ask a few questions

about the project
about the acceptance of usability among project members
about the availability of developer resources
and finally, we’ll ask for possible student project tasks.

People who register projects should know a project well enough to name a key developer who is willing to function as a technical mentor in the Season of Usability.

What’s the timeframe for Season of Usability 2008?

Call for Project Participation
March 2009
A call for participation is published via OpenUsability and other FLOSS-related media.

Project Selection
Beginning of April 2009
Usability mentors get in touch with projects they are interested in – they either bring their own one or pick one from the CfP. Possible topics for student projects are discussed, and the usability mentors finally decide for a project.

Student Application Phase
April 2009
The student project openings are published and students start to apply for specific projects.

Student Selection
End of April 2009
Usability mentors get in touch with the students who applied. After several cycles of job interviews, the mentors decide for a student.

Project Work
End of May – August/September
The actual scope of the task is defined and the project work starts.

Questions may be directed to students@openusability.org.

Email Address:

students@openusability.org

Website:

http://season.openusability.org/index.php/projects