Standard Research Grant: Beautiful Code: Aesthetic Discourse and Aesthetic Practice in a Software Organization

标准研究补助金：美丽的代码：软件组织中的美学话语和美学实践

• 批准号: 1946668
• 负责人: Paul Dourish
• 金额: $ 35.09万
• 依托单位: University of California-Irvine
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-03-01 至 2024-02-29
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1946668&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Standard; Research; Grant; Beautiful; Code

The actions of hundreds of software developers must be precisely coordinated if the software systems and web technologies that people use every day are to work effectively. Ensuring common orientations towards the development process is therefore crucial for developing and deploying new software applications. This project examines how multidisciplinary teams collaborate and coordinate around software systems to effectively develop new software. In addition to using the instrumental language of function and effectiveness to coordinate their work, software developers also discuss software, algorithms, and solutions as being “beautiful” or “ugly” to help them coordinate their design methods and problem-solving strategies. This project examines aesthetics as a mechanism of social control, organizational alignment, and professional signaling among software development teams in video game development where issues of aesthetics are paramount and where groups graphic artists, designers, computer programmers, and other professions must collaborate to craft a common sense of aesthetic practice within engineering production work. Broader impacts include graduate student training, using research materials to develop new university courses, and engaging in public conversations about values and design considerations of automated systems.This project investigates how technical and nontechnical factors shape the outcomes of software engineering collaborations in a digital game studio in which software engineers and programmers work with artists and marketers in developing their products. The main goals are to understand how aesthetics emerge within the daily work practices of collaborative teams, how aesthetic evaluations act as mechanisms of social control and practices of categorization, and how different aesthetic schemas are brought into alignment across the various components of video game design work. Adopting an ethnographic approach, the investigators will engage in participant observation for eight months, four days a week, including formal meetings and informal interactions. Observations will be supplemented with informal conversations and ethnographic interviews focusing on career trajectory, aesthetics, and socializing practices among software developers. Overall, this project will contribute to basic social scientific understanding of engineering work and collaboration at the human-technology interface.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

如果人们每天使用的软件系统和网络技术要有效地工作，则必须精确协调数百个软件开发人员的行动。因此，确保对开发过程的共同取向对于开发和部署新软件应用程序至关重要。该项目研究了多学科团队如何在软件系统围绕软件系统进行协作并协调以开发新软件。除了使用功能和有效性的工具语言来协调其工作之外，软件开发人员还讨论软件，算法和解决方案是“美丽”或“丑陋”，以帮助他们协调其设计方法和解决问题的策略。该项目考试的美学是社会控制，组织一致性和在视频游戏开发中的软件开发团队之间的专业信号的机制，在该团队中，美学问题是至高无上的，在该团体中，图形艺术家，设计师，计算机程序员和其他职业必须协作以在工程生产工作中进行美学实践的共同体现。更广泛的影响包括研究生培训，使用研究材料来开发新的大学课程，以及进行有关自动化系统的价值和设计考虑的公开对话。该项目研究如何在数字游戏工作室中塑造软件工程协作的成果如何与软件工程师和计划人员一起开发产品的软件工程工作室的成果。主要目标是了解合作团队的日常工作实践中的美学如何出现，美学评估如何充当社会控制和类别实践的机制，以及如何使不同的美学模式在视频游戏设计工作的各个组成部分中融入。采用民族志方法，调查人员将每周四天参与参与者观察，包括正式会议和非正式互动。观察将补充非正式的对话和民族志访谈，重点是职业轨迹，美学和软件开发人员之间的社交实践。总体而言，该项目将有助于对人类技术界面的工程工作和协作的基本社会科学理解。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并通过使用基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛的影响评估标准来评估值得支持。