Record Details
Involving older adults in the design and development of free/open source software
ScholarsArchive at Oregon State University
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Title | Involving older adults in the design and development of free/open source software |
| Names |
Davidson, Jennifer L.
(creator) Jensen, Carlos (advisor) |
| Date Issued | 2014-06-10 (iso8601) |
| Note | Graduation date: 2014 |
| Abstract | An age-wave is upon us where many older adults are reaching retirement. Technically experienced older adults have skills that could be directly applied to free/open source software (FOSS) communities, such as project management, programming, and/or knowledge of a rapidly growing end-user population. FOSS is a widely popular, low-cost way to create software solutions. FOSS is in need of new contributors, as it is mostly volunteer-driven and has a high contributor turnover rate. Also, FOSS communities are homogenous, comprised mostly of young white male contributors. My research goal is to change the current FOSS demographic by investigating how to involve older adults in FOSS design and development. This is a unique problem because older adults may have different motivations, experiences, and abilities than their younger counterparts. This research is comprised of two phases: involving older adults indirectly through participatory design, then investigating how to involve older adults more directly in development. This work is a portfolio of five peer-review quality conference publications that culminate in the following research deliverables: a list of benefits and barriers of older adults’ involvement in FOSS, guidelines for including older adults in FOSS, and a prototype workshop curriculum for encouraging participation in FOSS by older adults. |
| Genre | Thesis/Dissertation |
| Access Condition | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ |
| Topic | open source software |
| Identifier | http://hdl.handle.net/1957/49249 |
