[haiku] Master's thesis possibility with Haiku
- From: Eddy Groen <eddyspeeder@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: haiku@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 21 Sep 2009 21:43:50 +0200
Hey everyone,
Through this email, I hope to get in touch with those within the Haiku
project involved with graphical user design and/or the interface guidelines.
In preparing for my Master’s thesis, I would like to consider whether there
are opportunities to involve the Haiku project.
But first, a quick introduction: my name is Eddy Groen, or Eddyspeeder. I
was introduced to the BeOS around 1999 by my then-brother-in-law, Ithamar
Adema. I have worked for yellowTAB, and I have been using Zeta as my sole
operating system from May 2003 through June 2009, when my main workstation
became a MacBook Pro with OSX and an “on an island” VirtualBox-emulation of
Haiku.
Moving on to my studies. I major in Cognitive Psychology at the University
of Twente in The Netherlands. This field involves both fundamental and
applied research (back-to-back research). My Bachelor’s thesis is very
fundamental. It involves sequence learning, which is a highly abstracted
task that allows us to learn about the workings and limits of the brain.
Human factors (U.S.) or cognitive ergonomics (E.U.) is the name of the
applied field. This is where my heart lies, and what I wish to a compelling
Master’s thesis on. My university requires that it must always involve
empirical research, meaning that methodological examinations of participant
in a certain controlled setting (e.g., lab experiments, usability testing,
or case studies) are mandatory. A possible topic for me, for instance, is
researching resilience combined with individual stress at the Netherlands
Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO).
In thinking of other possibilities, I thought of aiming my efforts to an OS
that I love, use, and would like to succeed. Considering the current status
of Haiku, perhaps I may do a project toward improving (parts of) Haiku’s
GUI. I am duly impressed that there already are interface guidelines, and I
hope this trend will continue, that “Haiku stays on the OSX side of the
usability spectrum,” so to speak. If you ask me, I think BeOS/Haiku has many
innate architectural advantages in this regard anyway. On a digressional
note, here’s an interesting read on Linux’s usability
design<http://www.osnews.com/story/22047/Linux_User-Friendliness>
.
In closing, let’s get practical. As with the HCD / GSoC, someone must act as
a mentor (by the way, great to read that so many students passed this year,
IIRC it’s better than last year!). Furthermore, my C++ coding skills are
still far from adequate, so any implementation will have to be done by
others (but I’ll try to do what I can). Has the Haiku team got wishes for
design improvements of certain elements? How about a unified preference
panel? Or perhaps the Haiku menu, which to be honest is certainly not an
improvement over that of BeOS, usability-wise.
These are just some thoughts, but I look forward to discussing other
possibilities and opportunities. Be aware that at the moment I am just
considering my options and that I have not yet made a definitive choice.
Yours,
Eddy
P.S.: For the Dutchmen on this list, I have translated the OSNews article on
Haiku <http://www.osnews.com/story/22156/In_the_Round_Haiku_Alpha_Released>,
because I thought Thom did a great job on it. Currently it’s with Thom for
consideration.
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