The project I’m contributing to through the Outreachy program is Usability Testing for the Tasking Manager User Interface. The kickoff for the internship was very powerful, yet loaded. Working remotely with someone I’ve never met has come to be – as opposed to my initial assumptions – quite easygoing and the community has been very welcoming and helpful in the first steps.

During the first two weeks of the internship I got introduced to the community and the workflow. The issues on github were reviewed and the label UI was added to those that were related to the user interface. There has been sorting of the issues in terms of primary (User UI, Admin UI etc) and sub-sorting (Frontpage, Instructions, Feedback etc). Additionally vague issues and those already dealt with have been asked to be clarified in order to either categorise them or close them.

The aim for sorting the issues was that when someone that wants to contribute for a specific issue, they can filter and see other closely related reported issues or feature requests. This also means that when we want to focus on a specific area in the Tasking Manager, for example the Frontpage, then again all we would have to do is filter out the issues that have been filed.

This week we will be working on identifying places that people have trouble with as end users of the Tasking Manager and we will gather ideas for forming a questionnaire for testing the user interface.

Round 10 of Outreachy has started and I will be working as an intern during the summer on the Tasking Manager of Openstreetmap with Blake Girardot as my mentor.

Outreachy

In a nutshell, Outreachy is a program that encourages women (cis and trans), trans men and genderqueer people to make their first steps in free and open source software. For three months an intern is paired with one or more mentors for a project. This internship not only provides space for people from underrepresented backgrounds, it introduces new and enthusiastic helping hands to community-driven projects.

Openstreetmap

Openstreetmap is a worlwide community of mappers that collaborate on collecting data for a digital map. It is user-friendly software that respects the user’s data. It has Open Database License and is community driven and in that way is setting an example of what self-initiative and collective collaboration can offer back to our communities.

Usability testing for the Humanitarian Openstreetmap Team’s Tasking Manager

Tasking Manager

Humanitarian Openstreetmap Team’s (HOT) Tasking Manager is a tool used for dividing mapping projects for humanitarian causes. In June 2014 (update: corrected release date as suggested from the comment) Tasking Manager 2 was released. There are currently attempts made to improve the Tasking Manager Usability Interface.

Project Kickoff

The Outreachy internship started yesterday, Monday 25th of May. This is the schedule for the first week of the project:

• Introduction to the community
• Understand workflows, participate in online meetings
• Review open Tasking Manager issues
• Have the local repo up and running
• Make a pull request
• Populate a list of tasks a user does in order to map
• Get more familiar with the Tasking Manager front page (priority status, project selection etc)