/* * Copyright (C) 2006 Andreas Lloyd * * This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify * it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by * the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or * (at your option) any later version. * * This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the * GNU General Public License for more details. * * You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License * along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software * Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA. * * For more information, see the Question Guide home page: * http://www.eskar.dk/andreas/answers/ * * */ Question Guide 3.0.3 /* Several branches have been developed, but this is the latest stable release :-) */ Firstly, to examine how the Ubuntu hackers use and relate to the computer in their work and everyday life as a means of intellectual pursuit; secondly to examine how they maintain social relations and coordinate their work and what part the computer play in this exchange. /* Description of the main goals of the fieldwork. Used as a basis of formal introduction. Also as a reminder to note the ethical circumstances under which the interview is being conducted.*/ Make them tell stories! /* Another basic reminder. Most geeks are actually fairly good story tellers when it comes to technology. Otherwise they tend to often be slightly timid, and encouraging them to tell stories not only gets them to talk more, it also improves the overall quality of the data collected. */ Basic Statistics /* I used most of this data to supplement the Quantitative Survey on the Ubuntu Community I undertook as part of my fieldwork [http://www.eskar.dk/andreas/output/Survey-intro.html] */ Gender Age Nationality Location (current home) Private Status and children Level of education inc. eventual majors Current profession Personal background with computers /* The three sections below were to develop a narrative background of the informant. What kind of person is he? From where does his interest and passion for computers stem? How does he balance this part of his life with everything else? */ When and how did you begin using computers? Experiences? What attracted you about computers initially? At what age did you begin programming computers comfortably? What educational background do you have with computers? Tradition, norms? Friends, mentors, fellow travellers? Finding F/OSS How did you discover F/OSS? How did it feel to find such a community? What attracted you to F/OSS? Which projects have you contributed to - and for what reasons – intellectually, socially and in terms of proficiency? How has your own background (cultural, language-wise etc.) defined your participation in F/OSS? When and how did you join the Ubuntu community? How are you involved in Ubuntu? How much time do you spend working on (contributing to) Ubuntu in an average week? Life apart from computers How do you balance your computing life with your everyday life? How do your family and friends relate to your job / hobby? How do you explain what you do to non-technical people? Using and programming the computer as tool Take a grand tour of the informant's computing life: Let the informant introduce his computer(s). The relationship between them, which one is his primary computer. Then focus on that one. The computer as a house – decorated and inhabited. /* This is an attempt to use a method developed by an anthropologist friend of mine. The method is called "the humanly-mediated computer interview. To some extent it is an attempt to interview the informant's computer through the informant himself. How has he made the computer his own? How does he inhabit the mindspace that is the computer? Is it like a captain and his ship? A doctor and his instruments? A chef with his stove? A driver and his car? An academic and his library? Using so-called "Grand tour questions" to find out what parts are central to the informant and then focus on those. */ How many computers do you own, use or have access to? What functions do they fulfil? What are the relations between the various computers you use? Build machines, communication machines, servers, backups, test machines? How much time do you use on computers (working, playing games, socialising online etc.) in an average week? Which operating systems do you use? Why? Unix/Linux vs. other operating system architectures? Personal desktop setup and settings - How did you come about this setup? Which other variations have you tried or considered? - GNOME vs. KDE? - the command line - text editing programming (languages, design...) - configurations, scripts - structure – “how do you organize your files?” - Bazaar and revision control systems – branches, repositories? “Describe how you usually use your computer. Which programs do you use? How have you arranged them?” /* A backup question in some way. Not to be used easily, but to get the informant talking, hopefully offering plenty of input to lead away on various tangents. */ “Think-aloud” protocol – show the work you do with Ubuntu: Packaging, patching, bug reporting etc. /* The "think-aloud" protocol is a method where you ask the informant to show the work that he does, asking questions along the way: "Why would that change be necessary?" "Who do you need to ask about this when making such a change?" and so on. Again, a basis for collective exploration of work habits and use of the computer as mindspace. */ When are you productive? /* I've found "productive" to be an incredibly value-laden word in software-development circles. The answers are usually interesting. */ Being in the zone? The feeling of flow? What are your goals with the computer? What do you hope to achieve with or through the computer? Software and values /* Quite a mixed grouping of questions which all can be used to explore some of the ways the informants indirectly communicate and relate to each other through code and software licenses. */ What criteria and elements do you value when designing and programming a computer program? Who do you imagine will read the code you write? Who is the audience? What do you like most about programming? What do you get out of it? What is the creative element? Is it an art? Examples of beautiful code? Responses from people who have used your code? Changelogs? Revision histories? Who do you work with, how do you coordinate their individual efforts? Timezones? Cultural differences? Ownership of the code? How do you imagine your code will be used? On others' use of computers /* Another mixed grouping of questions seeking to explore the relationship between design values and the actual product. Also in relation to the answers given above. */ Design philosophy? - The Unix philosophy? - helping the end user (who is that?) Do you help people with computers? - imagining use cases - Developer Guidelines (GNOME HIG, Debian Developers Guidelines etc.) - discussing with other developers - responses, bugs, wishes from the users /* An attempt to use a quote from one of the developers to explore the common ground among the informants' understanding of the computer and the aims of the Ubuntu system. */ - Matthew Garrett: “Given a choice between making it easier to configure something and making it unnecessary to configure it, we should always choose the latter. Having a lot of options that should "just work" makes it harder for people to find the (fairly small) number of options that /are/ absolutely required.” [Sounder 24/05/06 11:22] - What does this mean, exactly? And do you agree? Why? /* As my fieldwork progressed, I began to incorporate more and more "emic" terms, that is the informants' own terms into my questions. Sane defaults was one that always came up, and it is one of the central discussions in the Ubuntu community. */ What does sane defaults mean to you? The computer as social tool. Communication. /* With this group of questions, I tried to map out the social and technical relations of each informant in relation to the rest of the community, and how the various technical means of communication overlapped or limited their interaction. Unfortunately, the list was so long, that informants gave staccato answers to last few, and instead I began asking some of these questions in relation to the grand tour of their use of the computer, and just used this list to check that I had asked about of all of the different kinds of communication. */ - email (mailing-lists, contacts, signed PGP keys...) - IRC (channels, nicks, commands, notifies...) - Who do you communicate regularly with over the computer? And how? - Web Forums - Blogs - Wikis - Bug trackers (reading, writing, commenting on bug reports, fixing them...) - Revision Control Systems (reading other people's code, commit access...) - “how do you coordinate your work with others?” - jargon – metaphors, technical terms, hacker slang (differences, interests problems?) Note specifications, discussions, bug reports that they have been working on. Ask about their rationale. /* It is important to connect the informant's answer to the paper-trail that they leave everyday on-line. They also tell better stories when asked to relate to individual cases. */ The Ubuntu Community Describe the Ubuntu community in relation to your role in it. /* Again a very open, grand-tour question. But I found that this one actually didn't work very well. The community is a very vague size to most of the informants. They relate to people, not the community as such. */ The structure of the community. Draw a flow diagram, structure of the community. What defines it? /* Asking the informants to draw their impression of the community is always fun. It breaks up the structure of the interview and forces them to activate other parts of their brain. Good discussion always arises from the drawings. */ What goals, commitments and ideas are shared in the Ubuntu community? /* This is basically cheating, as this is one of my research questions. It is also too broad to engage good conversation, so I didn't use it much. */ Why do people join the Ubuntu community? /* The following are a bunch reminders for questions that I never wrote out fully. But actually some of my most relevant data came from answers to these questions. */ Relationship with Upstream: General development upstream and Debian. The role of Canonical? Code of conduct? Governance? SABDFL? Teams? Leaders? Technical infrastructure? Release cycles, specs? Launchpad? Karma? Bazaar? Package management? What do you dislike about Free and Open Source Software? What do you dislike about Ubuntu? The Future /* The way that the informants answer these three questions often give a better idea of which goals and commitments the Ubuntu community share. */ what challenges do you see in the future for Ubuntu? Where do you see F/OSS in 5 years? In the long term? How do you think computers will develop? What will they (continue to) affect society? Singularity? Questions and Comments /* My informants rarely had a lot comments. I guess I had exhausted them with questions at that point. */