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

如果人们每天使用的软件系统和网络技术要有效地工作，那么数百名软件开发人员的行动必须精确地协调。因此，确保开发过程的共同方向对于开发和部署新的软件应用程序是至关重要的。这个项目检查多学科团队如何围绕软件系统进行协作和协调，以有效地开发新软件。除了使用功能和有效性的工具性语言来协调他们的工作之外，软件开发人员还讨论软件、算法和解决方案是“美”还是“丑”，以帮助他们协调他们的设计方法和解决问题的策略。这个项目将美学作为一种社会控制、组织协调和专业信号的机制，在电子游戏开发的软件开发团队中，美学问题是至关重要的，图形艺术家、设计师、计算机程序员和其他专业人员必须合作，在工程生产工作中形成审美实践的共识。更广泛的影响包括研究生培训，使用研究材料开发新的大学课程，以及参与有关自动化系统的价值和设计考虑的公开对话。这个项目调查了技术和非技术因素如何影响数字游戏工作室中软件工程合作的结果，在这个工作室中，软件工程师和程序员与美工和营销人员一起开发他们的产品。我们的主要目标是理解美学是如何在协作团队的日常工作实践中出现的，美学评估是如何作为社会控制和分类实践的机制，以及不同的美学图式是如何在电子游戏设计工作的各个组成部分中融合在一起的。采用人种学方法，调查人员将进行为期八个月的参与性观察，每周四天，包括正式会议和非正式互动。观察将辅以非正式对话和人种学访谈，重点关注软件开发人员的职业轨迹、美学和社交实践。总的来说，这个项目将有助于对工程工作和人机界面协作的基本社会科学理解。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.