A couple of weeks ago, my master’s thesis was approved, titled User experience design in open source development: Approaches to usability work in the Moodle community. The work documents usability work that happened for Moodle 2.0, so it was published just in time before that will finally get out. :)
I owe a big thanks to many, many members of the Moodle community. I am truly grateful to the two professors, Eleni Berki (home) and Saila Ovaska (home), under whose very generous guidance the work took place. Especially Saila seemed to invest a near-infinite number of hours in my work, for which I am still amazed. Their final statement for the work is presented below.
The grade Eximia Cum Laude Approbatur equals 6 on a scale (in Finnish) of 1-7, where 1 is weak and 7 is the highest grade. I have been asked to write an article based on the work, but that will probably have to wait for now.
Update: I have sent a copy of the thesis also to Moodle HQ, as well as to Tim Hunt and to Silvia Calvet, who have supported Moodle usability efforts and my work. Further printed copies are available, tell me if you’re interested.
Update 2: I have been glad to see this has raised plenty interest in Twitter. Thanks everybody for the retweets and the congratulations! You rock! Feedback is very welcome.
Update 3, Nov. 18 2011: This thesis won an honorary mention in the thesis competition (link in Finnish) of the Finnish chapter of SIGCHI ! Yay! Their statement of the thesis: “The jury thought this as a new type of thesis work, which successfully captures the phases and challenges in a multi-phased process of redesigning a Moodle community application. Open source communities have been little investigated from the HCI point of view, and the author successfully opens interesting new viewpoints with the thesis. The constructive Pro Gradu thesis has also resulted a tangible contribution.”

