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2014 Keynote by Sumana Harihareswara

727 bytes added, 16:58, 31 March 2014
added citation & blog link
We in the open source community -- and code4lib is part of this -- put a lot of energy into lowering barriers to entry, like licensing and cost. And those are visible barriers that stop people from getting information. But bad usability is a barrier to entry too-- it's less visible but it's just as real.
Free access to education and free expression of political opinions and privacy from unwarranted surveillance are human rights (in the [http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml UN Declaration of Human Rights]), and even if you don't want to go that far, in general they're social justice goals that we all like. We're here because we share a vision -- less waste, more empowerment, getting knowledge into people's hands. But actually getting these benefits to our users requires that our users be able to use our software. So, in getting rid of user experience obstacles, we are working to achieve social justice goals.
OK, since it's so clear why we ought to make our products usable, why do we have this bottleneck?
In general, marginalized people develop more empathy than the dominant group, because we *have to*. We have to be able to see from other people's point of view, the dominant point of view, as a matter of survival.
This is one reason diversity in a group is useful - it includes people with different perspectives, AND is likely to have more people with the ability to see from multiple perspectives. Including the users' perspectives.''(see: http://blog.melchua.com/2013/08/20/engineering-education-discourses-on-representation-why-problematization-matters-beddoes-2011/ ; "hegemonic masculinity" as coined by coined by Raewyn Connell: Connell, R. W. (2005). Masculinities (2nd ed.). Berkeley, Calif: University of California Press; "strong objectivity" (coined by Sandra Harding) and standpoint theory, Harding, S. (1993). Rethinking standpoint epistemology: what is strong objectivity? In L. Alcoff & E. Potter (Eds.), Feminist Epistemologies (pp. 49–82). New York, NY: Routledge. Much thanks to [http://blog.melchua.com/ Mel Chua] for research on this.)''
And we need to be able to see from many different users' points of view, even when it's uncomfortable or shows us that we have failed.
* http://bakinglibrarian.wordpress.com/2014/03/25/code4lib-day-1/
* http://cynng.wordpress.com/2014/03/25/code4lib-2014-opening-keynote/
* http://makerbridge.si.umich.edu/blog/140331-900
== Tweets ==
* [https://twitter.com/yo_bj/status/448454357747793920 ‏@yo_bj] #c4l14 Sumana If the group making the software aren't diverse, things aren't going to change.
* [https://twitter.com/cm_harlow/status/448454514824478721 ‏@cm_harlow] @brainwane diversity, empathy with multiple perspectives, then gets pushed out of tech, software #c4l14
 
* [https://twitter.com/yo_bj/status/448454630276874241 @yo_bj] #c4l14 Sumana We need to treat front end functions with the same status as other positions in the tech field.
* [https://twitter.com/squaredsong/status/448454665261158402 @squaredsong] "Disciplined empathy" in user design. @brainwane argues is much needed in the tech #c4l14
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