Man it's been a while...

Hey everyone!

Sorry it's been so long since I've posted...it was Labor Day weekend (as most everyone knows) and also my boyfriend's birthday so it's been a busy past few days. Now it's back to the daily grind of school and research.

I met with my research advisor today about the interviews and he seemed just as excited as Yoonki and I about the results and progress being made. We are still have a slightly difficult time finding candidates that fit what we're looking for (if anyone out there that uses static analysis tools is reading this please feel free to get in touch with me! :D ), but we have been able to get useful results from the interviews we've had so far, particularly from the participatory design exercise. Our interviewees had some really good suggestions, but instead of having them draw their own sketches (or maybe along with it) we will try to have printouts of the static analysis tool their familiar with (which we will find out about through our pre-interview questionnaire/consent form) and allow them to show us what they find useful and not useful about the interface. We also were not able to try the 'interactive interview' idea with our last two interviewees (they were familiar with the tools, but not avid users; they didn't even have the plugins installed on their computer), but we still feel it's a good idea and a great way of getting detailed results. We just need to be sure to be prepared for those like our two last interviewees who don't avidly use tools/don't have any tools installed on their machine.

Another something that I need to look into is a software called Atlas.ti for qualitative analysis. It may not be worth the effort, but being that I never really heard of it, and neither Yoonki nor I have used it before it's worth at least looking into. We want to make sure we are able to clearly analyze any results we get form our interviews and correctly portray and ratios or numbers we give.

As far as my classes are concerned, they are still proceeding rather slowly, but assignments are starting to roll in so it should get more interesting. My grades are looking good though, so that's a good thing (particularly for my Networking class--although the material isn't too difficult, the professor isn't the easiest to understand). I'm trying to stay ahead on my class assignments so it leaves me more time to focus on my research...so far it's not too difficult but we'll see how things go as the semester progresses.

I wish I could think of something else exciting to share, but I believe that's all I have at the moment.
Until next time...