Challenges, Motivations, and Success Factors in the Creation of Hurricane Katrina "Person Locator" Web Sites
Psychology of Programming Interest Group (unpublished workshop), 2006.
KeyWords:data,everyday software,programming,software,case study,open source software,systems,empirical research
We interviewed six people who created web sites enabling Hurricane
Katrina survivors to report their status. We learned that interviewees did not
discover and communicate with other teams when they started their projects,
which led to redundant sites. The absence of a shared task impeded trust between
teams, ultimately inhibiting data collection and aggregation. Moreover,
communication within teams was problematic; developers who had adequate
technical skills to work alone were more positive about their sites? success
compared to developers who had to shore up skill weaknesses through collaboration.
These problems did not simply result from over-sized egos, since site
creators were generally motivated by a concern for other people instead of selfinterested
motivations such as money, reputation, or learning. Rather, these
problems highlight the need for improved development methods and systems to
help developers discover and communicate with potential collaborators on
widely-distributed, time-critical projects.
Preferred citation: C. Scaffidi, B. Myers, and M. Shaw. Challenges, Motivations, and Success Factors in the Creation of Hurricane Katrina "Person Locator" Web Sites, Psychology of Programming Interest Group (unpublished workshop), 2006.
Entry last Updated 2006-11-02
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