Re: [Usability] Usability internship with GNOME

[Brian Cameron <Brian Cameron Sun COM>]

Jan:

> Within the last weeks, me and Jan-Christoph Borchardt student joined the
> list because we are both interested in usability and want to push open
> source further.

That's great!

> Maybe there is a strong interest by other young and motivated students
> at universities who would like improve the gnome user experience.
> What do you think about setting up a possibility for universities and
> students to get in contact with gnome? If you like the idea - what do
> you think are decent ways to do that?

The GNOME community is always interested in working with volunteers
and academia, and there are many on-going usability tasks where help
is needed.

To get started, I would recommend participating on this mailing list
for some time and joining in discussions.  From time to time, people
ask the GNOME Usability team for help in various areas.  Stepping in
to help when such requests are made is a great way to start the process
of getting involved.  Also the GNOME Usability team Wiki contains
information about things that are currently being worked on, and would
be a good resource to familiarize yourself with.  There is plenty of
work-in-progress highlighted on the Wiki which would benefit from some
further attention.

  http://live.gnome.org/UsabilityProject

If you have any particular interests, then it would be helpful if you
could explain in more detail how you would like to get involved.  Do you
have an interest in doing usability studies, research (such as card
sorting), providing critiques of the usability of new modules proposed
for GNOME 2.30, or what?

There may be people on the GNOME Usability team who might be able to
act as a mentor for you, but this would be easier to arrange if it is
more clear what specific things you have the interest and time to work
on.

When internships become available, it is most common for them to be
given to people who have a good track record of doing productive
volunteer work, so being active as a volunteer is the best way to work
towards finding further opportunities to work more closely on the
project.

Brian