Development of a music organizer for children

Software development for children is challenging; children have their own needs, which often are not met by ‘grown up’ software. We focus on software for playing songs and managing a music collection—tasks that children take great interest in, but for which they have few or inappropriate tools. We address this situation with the design of a new music management system, created with children as design partners: the Kids Music Box

Improving Screencast Accessibility for People with Disabilities: Guidelines and Techniques

Screencast video tutorials are increasingly popular in libraries, but may present access problems for people with disabilities unless specific accessibility features are added during screencast creation. This article reviews existing standards for accessible web-based multimedia and gives guidelines on how to create accessible screencasts based on these standards

To share or not to share: Publication and quality assurance of research data outputs. A report commissioned by the Research Information Network

A study on current practices with respect to data creation, use, sharing and publication in eight research disciplines (systems biology, genomics, astronomy, chemical crystallography, rural economy and land use, classics, climate science and social and public health science). The study looked at data creation and care, motivations for sharing data, discovery, access and usability of datasets and quality assurance of data in each discipline

Enabling sustainable user interaction with domestic heating controls

Copyright @ 2011 University of BathThe way we live greatly effects the carbon emissions of our homes; heating accounts for nearly 60% of domestic energy consumption in the UK. This consumption is directly influenced by occupants through the use of their control systems. Using realworld data from buildings and observational data from users this research proposes guidelines for the design of more inclusive domestic heating controls. Two usercentred studies have been completed to date; one using controls under lab conditions and the other in a low-carbon housing development. In both studies controls were found to exclude users due to the cognitive demands placed on them, therefore creating an unnecessary barrier to reducing heat energy consumption in the home. The design principles proposed aim to help designers consider user needs when designing the interfaces of heating controls and energy management systems. By designing more inclusive and usable controls considerable energy savings could be made in the domestic context.This work is funded by the EPSRC and Buro Happold

Report on the Second Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experiences (WSSSPE2)

This technical report records and discusses the Second Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experiences (WSSSPE2). The report includes a description of the alternative, experimental submission and review process, two workshop keynote presentations, a series of lightning talks, a discussion on sustainability, and five discussions from the topic areas of exploring sustainability; software development experiences; credit & incentives; reproducibility & reuse & sharing; and code testing & code review. For each topic, the report includes a list of tangible actions that were proposed and that would lead to potential change. The workshop recognized that reliance on scientific software is pervasive in all areas of world-leading research today. The workshop participants then proceeded to explore different perspectives on the concept of sustainability. Key enablers and barriers of sustainable scientific software were identified from their experiences. In addition, recommendations with new requirements such as software credit files and software prize frameworks were outlined for improving practices in sustainable software engineering. There was also broad consensus that formal training in software development or engineering was rare among the practitioners. Significant strides need to be made in building a sense of community via training in software and technical practices, on increasing their size and scope, and on better integrating them directly into graduate education programs. Finally, journals can define and publish policies to improve reproducibility, whereas reviewers can insist that authors provide sufficient information and access to data and software to allow them reproduce the results in the paper. Hence a list of criteria is compiled for journals to provide to reviewers so as to make it easier to review software submitted for publication as a “Software Paper.

Usability testing in a library web site redesign project

An intuitive library information gateway is critical to meeting the information needs of library users in the digital age. This article describes the process involved in redesigning a library Web site. In addition to first determining the goals and requirements for the library Web site, a user and task analysis was conducted for defining the library\u27s user base and types of tasks which users might be performing at the site. Usability testing methods, such as observational interviews, provided fresh insights about how users are interacting with the library Web interface as they approach various information seeking tasks. These usability studies uncovered problems related to unclear terminology, proper use of color, size and location of navigational links, and the need for context sensitive help, built-in redundancy, and clear and consistent navigation

Building Open Educational Resources from the Ground Up: South Africa's Free High School Science Texts

This paper presents a case study of the development of the South African project Free High School Science Texts (FHSST), an initiative to develop a free high school science text for all teachers and learners in South Africa. The goals of the case study were two-fold: to examine and analyze the practices associated with the successes and challenges encountered by FHSST; and to encourage a participatory, analytical process that will assist other open education projects in thinking about and sharing their practices, processes, and strategies. Beyond its implications for South African education, the FHSST project can serve as a model for peer production of open content, offering insights into planning and decision making around 1) recruiting volunteers; 2) sustaining their participation; 3) using technology to create effective workflow; 4) conducting hackathons; and 5) facilitating teacher trials. Findings from this study offers insights into overall approaches and goals that may prove instrumental across open education projects, serving as a reference for development of assessment tools and resources that may assist open education projects in tracking, sharing, and advancing their learnings and success