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© 2010 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
Chapter 1
Designing Designs, or
Designs on Design
Barbara Tversky
Stanford University/Columbia Teachers College
1.1 STUDYING SOFTWARE DESIGN IN VIVO
In 2009, computer scientists Andre van der Hoek, Alex Baker, and Marian Petre invited
colleagues—some computer scientists, some not, some novices, some veterans—to par-
ticipate in a collaborative research project. e starting point was three sets of videotaped
design sessions in which small teams of experienced designers from three soware com-
panies were asked to design soware to simulate trac ow. e system was not meant to
control trac in the world, but rather ...