user study

I've been working like a dog trying to get my master's work (a user interface toolkit for interactive graph visualization) wrapped up before I head out to Europe in April. Among other things, this has put quite the damper on the free cycles available for things like blogging, but the work is really starting to shape up. I've given talks on the work to groups at both Berkeley and PARC and have received some great feedback.

As a colleague of mine has taken to saying, "a toolkit is software where the interface is an API." So now I'm launching a user study to test the API of the toolkit by sitting programmers down and observing them build applications with it. So..... here comes the pitch..... If you're familiar with the Java programming language, have built Java Swing or AWT user interfaces, and (preferably) are comfortable with the Eclipse integrated development environment, please consider participating in my study. The study is being held at UC Berkeley and will last about an hour and forty-five minutes. Not only will you get exposure to an open-source software toolkit that may be useful to you, you will also be compensated for your time. Just e-mail me if you're interested.