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As an undergraduate Computer Science major, Nick Currier has multiple titles at Colorado State University including IT Coordinator, Systems Support, and Training Media Specialist for Academic Computing and Network Services. An additional title he has, and the one that this project will be most focused on is Webmaster for the computer security club, Hashdump, at Colorado State University.  His hobbies include coding, web development, and working on open source projects. He codes and develops his projects at work, in his classes, and in most of his free time. He draws his knowledge and skills from multiple resources including his classes, his friends, his family (dad and brother), and of course, the internet. He has learned multiple programming languages in a single summer purely from doing research on the internet. He is the perfect candidate to do research on for this project, because he is open to allowing me to observe him work on the project he is currently contributing to as much as I want, as well as answer any questions I have. I get to see the up

close and personal view of the making of the Hashdump website for this project.  

To view the Hashdump website, click here: http://hashdump.org/

Thesis:Nick Currier is an undergraduate student who uses several artifacts such as a laptop, a tiling window manager, and face to face conversations as the most important genres that contribute to his work process, which is focused on using logical design technique, and an optimistic exigency to create a well-made website for both his target audience and any other visitors of Hashdump.org. My website provides detailed information about the methods that were used to obtain information on how and why content on the Hashdump website becomes public information for any audience to view, and how the analogue, embodied, and digital components of the website are part of a compositional ecology.

Data Collection MethodsThree methods of data collection were used in preparation for the publication of this project.

1. A formal, in person interview was conducted with Nick Currier. 2. Over 5 hours-worth of observational notes were taken of Nick working on the

Hashdump website.3. Nick assisted me in creating my own website that mimics his project.

Data Collection Methods- InterviewThe following information is a summary of the interview that was conducted. To view the full interview questions and answers, please visit http://conative5.wordpress.com/2014/10/30/field-notes-from-data-collection-fr-project-3/.

Nick has about seven years-worth of coding experience. The development of the Hashdump website uses three different languages: Markdown, SCSS, and Coffeescript. Two of the languages he had prior experience with, and one of them he had to learn for the purpose of his project.

He described the purpose of the website is for maintaining communication with members of the club about club meetings. A specific element he highlighted in the interview was the wiki. Its specific function is to accommodate members as well as non-members, such as people who are interested in joining the club, alumni, or people that just want to know about the club in general. He identified the target audience of the club as computer science members with an interest in security, and therefore, the target audience of the website is similar, but does extend to people with similar interests that are not necessarily part of the club. He acknowledges that this is not the only audience that the site draws in; visitors do not have to be specifically interested in security. As a member of the club himself, he knows that many members join the club because they have a connection to someone in the club and get sucked into going to meetings and eventually joining (which is how he got involved with the club).

The code he writes generates the website. He explained this as “at any given time we don’t have an actual website; using Jekyll, the site is compiled from markdown into HTML that the web server can display to users. You can’t run a program without compiling it.” He updates the webpage about once a week with new meeting information. I asked about several elements of design that CO 302 has highlighted so far: color, alignment, proximity, and repetition.

He obsesses over color choice! He says, “Color is so important, colors are everything. I spent about a year’s span of time playing around with color for my laptop (not exclusively this specific project) and constantly changing the colors on the pallet.” I asked him, “What happens if you get the wrong color?” and he responded with, “I change it because it is not aesthetically pleasing”. Regarding alignment, he commented that, as a developer, it is hard to make the right choices to have everything perfectly aligned. His example was that it is important to choose the right fonts. For example, the capital S of one font he chose hung below all the other letters, which was not good, especially when writing “CSU”.

The alignment of the wiki page was another example he provide because it was something that he struggled with. It had to be aligned properly so it would look nice on both the mobile and desktop version of the site. He comments, “I don’t think the website would look good if things were not aligned in the proper columns and spaces on the page. I write the code so that the information aligns itself ”.

As I moved onto the topic of proximity, he said, “All these things are just common sense. You put titles near where the corresponding information is. It doesn’t make sense to not do that… you can’t overlap elements… and don’t want to have a cluttered page ”.

The last website design principal that I had left to ask about was repetition, which isn’t something that he considered common sense. He pointed out that the info about meetings is repeated because it is important enough information that people see it as the first thing that comes up on the website’s home page, and it is also on its own page for visitors to go to and see additional information about meetings.

Next, I asked a few questions on the content that he incorporates into the website. I was curious how he decides the hierarchy of importance of the elements on the website. He replied, “That decision is up to the club president. I occasionally ask if something should be of high priority and be on the homepage because not everything can go on the home page. Information about who we are and what the meetings are like is important enough to put on the home page”.

Transitioning into his drafting process, I asked three final questions: What elements did he include at first that he later decided to discard and why? How many “drafts” does he usually use before he is satisfied with the final product (not including minor tweaks and necessary updates)? And, how long does he work on the project each day?His responses (respectively) were, “We have gotten rid of wiki pages because they were off topic or we were able to merge a couple different ones into one page”. He has taken about four months-worth of drafting time to get to where he is at now with the best style, layout, and basic content on the website with working on the project approximately an hour and half a day.

Data Collection Methods- Observation The following data has been modified to look more presentable in an online environment. To view the raw data, please visit http://conative5.wordpress.com/2014/10/30/field-notes-from-data-collection-fr-project-3/.

(Although I observed over five hours of Nick’s work time, I cut out the small details to provide the most important data on his behaviors and habits that I noticed were repeated each separate time I had an observation session with him.)

Nick’s work environment is very diverse. He can work almost anywhere as long as he has his main tools: his laptop and laptop charger, and access to the internet. The most common places he works are his office at work, the Computer Science Building on campus, at his desk in his room, at the dinner table, on the couch, and sometimes even in the middle of the living room floor.

When observing Nick working, one of the key questions I asked myself is “Does he work for hours straight, or take frequent breaks?”. The answer that I discovered is, it depends on how much he wants to get done. If he’s in a productive mood, he will isolate himself and work for at least an hour straight. If there are distractions in the background, like other people present, he will take many frequent breaks and talk to friends, text, or go online and look at non related content. He often has background noise on while he works, such as TV, music, or friends talking. Another work habit that I noticed is that he likes to work next to/ in the same room as other people that are busy working and occasionally converse with them about the code he is working on. He frequently asks the people he is sitting with their opinions on his color, and deign choices.

Image from: http://www.cs.colostate.edu/cstop/images/features/computer-science.jpg

Data Collection Methods- Website CreationNick is so passionate about his coding that he agreed to help me make my own website! He enjoys sharing (with anyone who will listen) his knowledge about his work. Although I used a template of his code, and he was the master behind the magic of getting the website published, he went through the code line by line with me and explained what each function does, which gave me a perspective on how much work it actually takes to be a digital composer for this type of project.

Here are few things that I got the chance to experience for myself about web design and development by stepping into Nick’s shoes:

Personal Color choices Font choices Proximity and alignment judgments Space for content (Making sure nothing looks overcrowded)

FindingsNick is a digital composer who has a good sense of rhetorical concepts such as audience, logos(regarding design principals), hierarchy, and exigency.

He knows who the audience of his website is, both the target audience and the non-intended audience. This was obvious from the formal interview I had with him because he explained that the reason he created the wiki was to accommodate an audience that did not necessarily have knowledge about the material that the club presents to its members.

By visiting the Hashdump website and evaluating the design and functionality of the website for myself made it obvious that Nick knows that design matters.

For example, the above image is a screenshot of the Wiki tab on the Hashdump website. The title of the page is at the top, everything is aligned in columns and rows with appropriate titles and subtopics in proximity to what they are associated with, the content is not overlapping or cluttered, and the font and colors are easy to read. In the interview, he commented that it doesn’t

make sense not to use good design techniques, specifically regarding proximity and amount of content in a given space. And as stated in the interview (and shown in the screenshot of the wiki page), legibility is also a high priority of his in design, especially when considering color choices and font choices. Another piece of evidence that shows his commitment to logos of a website design is that he makes sure the published website looks good on both desktop computers and mobile devices.

Although he wouldn’t think of it in the terms of hierarchy, Nick does use hierarchy in order to determine what content gets published and what content goes where. He takes direct orders from the club president. The interaction between him and the club president could be considered an element of division of labor, since Nick is not the only person contributing to the development of the Hashdump website.

One of the neat observations that I picked up while doing research was that Nick’s exigency is that he loves to code and do web development, and therefore loves to share his work with other people. This became more and more obvious as I observed him interacting with other people, as well as myself as he writes his code. He loves to ask other people’s opinion on his designs, and he will tell anyone around him what his code does and how hard he worked to get it to run. His dedication to his project is evident in the amount of time he said he spent just on drafting to get to the quality of the website up to his standards: four months (and that’s just to get the bare minimum published without all the bells and whistles). The real evidence that shows his passion is this website that he helped me create. He would not have taken the time to do so if he did not enjoy sharing his knowledge about web development and coding!

Maps

Activity

System

The Off-screen genres revolve around the face to face conversation aspect. This is mostly because in my observation sessions, Nick shares with me or other friends in the room what is going on with:

the code the tiling window manager  (Herbstluftwm) his outside conversations (IM, text) with people who are not in the room  the stuff he finds online the color/design of the Hashdump website the background noise, comments about the TV show, or the music his notes/instructions

The On-screen genres revolve around his laptop because that’s where most of his work takes place.

Genre

Ecology