New players have arrived!

We're very happy to share that Joel Chan has joined this experiment! Joel's research group developed discourse graphs and studies how users adopt and adapt discourse graphs for their use cases. Joel's group uses qualitative research methods like user interviews and recordings, which lead to observations and hypotheses about user attitudes and benefits. We think this approach is especially well-suited to address our questions about the extent to which our Issues board aids newcomers in quickly identifying and executing impactful starter projects, as described for the current project.

Joel will be conducting user interviews with new members of the lab and periodically will check in with them as they begin to navigate the lab graph.

On that note - we've welcomed a new undergraduate student to our group! They'll be using our Issues board to identify candidate mini-projects, and navigate the "backstory" of each project.

 

Shared meeting notes from our first conversation

Our meeting notes include a series of entry points for the student to become acquainted with the lab graph.

 

The lab member carries out a tutorial to get set up with the lab graph.

 

The dashboard shows entry points for researchers with different levels of experience.

On the Issues board, we filter for projects that could use data analysis:

 

Filtering the Issues board by issue type

And even issues that have been marked for a future analysis student.

 

This could be you!

Each page has some background info and important contextual links to other parts of the graph.

 

"Discourse context" automatically connects the issue to related hypotheses (based on where it was created).

For more context, you can also look through all the pages that have referenced this issue:

 

This issue has popped up nine times previously, including three times in a 1:1 meeting.

As well as canvases that contain the issue.

 

It showed up in three different canvases during our retreat; this indicates high interest!

 

There it is in context with larger (future) project!

We expect that this contextual info will give the student a means of exploring the purpose and bigger picture of their potential projects, at their own pace, without relying solely on one mentor as an apprentice. This in turn can give the student a greater sense of agency in choosing (rather than being assigned) a project that suits their interests, and allows them to find the right people to ask for more information.