Project meeting

Alun and Mustie met at OUCS on 16th Nov 2006

Work packages

We agreed that we had made a slow start, because of illnesses and other project commitments. The work packages now look more like this.

Task/work package

Leaders

Sept

Oct

Nov

Dec

Jan

Detailed scheduling and planning

MR

No detailed schedule plan available.

Contact users and line-up interviews

MR

Via Ruth Mustie has contacted and interviewed 1 Classics user. (1 other to be contacted). Emails to the DIAMM project and the BRIDGES project have not been answered.

Analysis of IB usability feedback

MR

Mustie to arrange meeting with Matthew Mascord to discover if any data / users available?

tbc

Analysis of BVREH usability feedback

MR, AE

Mustie is not convinced data available.

tbc

Interviewing of selected IB users

MR, AE

tba

Interviewing of selected BVREH users

MR, AE

tbc

'Lab' usability tests of BRIDGES

MR, AE

tba

tba

Analysis of usability tests1

MR, AE

Report writing

MR, MN

Final report

MR, MN

IB

ACTION: Mustie will contact Matthew Mascord to arrange a meeting to discover what IB existing data is available and to find out contact details for users to approach to interview. (Anticipate meeting to take place by end of November).

BVREH

Interview Classics user

Ruth (BVREH) recommended that Mustie should meet with Charles, Classics - (XXXX tbc: Dr Charles V. Crowther (Contact details and subject interests listed here http://www.classics.ox.ac.uk/faculty/directory/buscard.asp?IDno=282)).

13th Nov 2006 Mustie had a long conversation with Charles. Mustie reports: "Unlike our initial hypothesis, people in Classics are very much motivated to try new technologies and are not afraid of it! They are also very much used to distributed computing although they are NOT very keen on command line interactions. He showed me (lab) paper "scans" of stone scriptures and thought 3-D electronic copies could be very useful in his area of research. Laser scanners may be objectionable but camera incorporating images/scans from multiple angles to put a model of the stones or scriptures could be very useful The reason I bring this up is because the process could use Grid computing for capture and subsequent visualisation of the sone scriptures. It also requires large sets of data. Electronic copies that can be manipulated in various axis like paper would be beneficial in cross-region collaborations. Another application is in fieldwork to capture to electronic copy engravings from stones (in situ, i.e. anywhere in the world). He also mentioned Elaine Matthews in the same building. I waited around for her for as long as I could but left a card for her at the end as I had another appointment. She works on Lexicons of Greek Personal names if I recall correctly."

Mustie knows that he will have to make contact again with Elaine - not expecting her to contact him. Mustie has lengthy notes in long-hand from the meeting with Charles.

ACTION: Done Mustie will visit Elaine 4th December.

ACTION: Mustie to follow up interview with question for Charles, so we can see something of their work online, for our reference and for the final report. e.g. Is it the work of Alan Bowman and Mike Brady?

Sample of Mustie's email:

ACTION: Ally to confirm with Mustie, Charles' details.

Other BVREH feedback

After speaking with Ruth, Mustie is not convinced that there is any usability feedback to be gleaned from the BVREH project. Alun and Mustie agreed that Alun will contact Ruth separately, in case a second approach manages to un-earth this usability feedback.

Ruth's reply (Dec 2006): "I've been trying to think about how our findings might help in determining our interviewees' attitude to their own technical ability. Largely in our interviews we asked individuals how they carry out their everyday research and how technology is currently a part of that day to day process. Occasionally a respondent might offer a comment on their attitude in general, but it wasn't really something we asked. The scenarios included in the draft report were our perspective on the range of researchers that we interviewed and were not directly related to interviewees own admission of technical ability. Would it be useful to get together at some point to discuss this further? I think (though I can't remember exactly) that I gave Mustie some contacts whom we'd previously interviewed, but I could perhaps find some more and let you have the few write-ups which do include comments on attitudes to technical ability. I hope this is at least a little bit helpful! Best wishes, Ruth"

ACTION: Ally to chat with Mark to understand what was anticipated when the project was prepared, and then to contact Ruth.

BRIDGES

ACTION: DONE - await response Alun to contact Richard Sinnott, following lack of response to Mustie's message. Looking for regular BRIDGES users to contact, also possibility of "breaking BRIDGES" briefly during the usability test. (This obviously requires agreement and/or support from Richard's team. We want to be able to observe 2 BRIDGES users - during this failure... or offer them a dodgy script so failure happens for that reason.

Sample message from Mustie:

BRIDGES Users "I work with Mark Norman on the ESP-Grid follow-on project. We would like to talk to some of the researchers/users of the BRIDGES. We would like to find out about the work practices of BioInformaticians and if and how the Grid can be beneficial in their research. Part of our goal is to get a feel of the level of Grid expertise required of such users. Would it be possible for me in touch with existing or potential BRIDGES users? Thanks. Regards,"

ACTION: DONE - await response Alun to arrange for username etc. that allows Mustie and Alun to view the Bridges portal again. This might still be the username etc. from Richard during phase one, but just need to check. Also to get some sample questions to query the portal with. "You can connect to the portal containing the BRIDGES and DyVOSE portlets at:" http://pioneer.nesc.gla.ac.uk/gridsphere

ACTION: DONE - await response Alun to check that the BRIDGES documents which have broken links on the NeSC pages can be published again - e.g. Singapore paper, for Mustie to read up on the project.

ACTION: plan for visit to Glasgow in December to meet BRIDGES users

ACTION: DONE - await response of Richard to understand if David still best contact. Alun to contact David Leader (cc Mustie), to see if he can help again?

Richard's response December 2006: "Alas our Bridges BLAST resource is off-line right now. We are upgrading it due to UK e-Science CA cert upgrades which need to be installed. I will ping you as soon as it is on-line again." Report from Singapore to be sent separately when Richard back in office. Richard anticpates BLAST portal going online again in January.

Interviews

Agreed that we'd draw up a formal interview structure, and that Mustie and Ally would interview together. Mustie leading, Ally recording - Mustie not sticking to the structure, keeping things fluid. Ally would prompt from the structured formal interview list. Use iPod to record the interview, if permission granted.

Incentives

ACTION: Alun to source incentives, probably the Incentives budget divided by e.g. 7. Vouchers to be purchased to be offered as a carrot if we have to draft in graduate users, or more likely to offer our gratitude to interviewees after their help.

Looking at other sources of data

Mustie has been thinking more about the data he has available from the CyberSEM project. Mustie writes "I already have data on CyberSEM users who are non-technical. They've had to endure the quirks in the video streaming and firewall issues. I will see if I can pick up some other data points at the NanoTech conference next week where CyberSEM will be demonstrated to the general public.

ACTION: Mustie to consider what might be used, whilst attending meeting in Denmark next week re. CyberSEM.

Mustie has also contacted the DIAMM (music manuscripts) project. No response.

ACTION: DONE - await response Alun to approach DIAMM direct.

Julia Craig-McFeely of the DIAMM project (http://www.diamm.ac.uk/index.html website by CCH) responded 4th December:

What about researchers interviewed as part of the Intute Support for Researchers work by James Wilson?

ACTION: Ally to talk to James about these users?

ACTION: Done. Mustie to follow up link to the usability project task force in Nottingham. Temporary link is http://192.168.17.78/~oercperson/ but does not work. Mustie has again followed this up.

  1. Including reaction to failure (1)

ESPGRIDwiki: Phase2Notes (last edited 2013-05-17 16:26:47 by localhost)