Addon Devleoper Interviews

timmerino · 03-19-11, 10:14 AM

I am a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin and I am working on a research project which is examining the use of AddOns in World of Warcraft and the Blizzard AddOn UI model. I would be interested in speaking with any AddOn developer with any level of AddOn development experience. It doesn't matter whether you develop AddOns for public use or just your own personal use. I anticipate that the interviews will take between one and two hours and we can conduct them online. I have conducted the majority of my interviews in WoW through RealID chat. Please let me know if you are interested, and I look forward to speaking with you!

Tim Arnold
Master's Candidate in Information Studies, Expected 2012
The University of Texas at Austin

[email protected]

Crissa · 03-19-11, 10:35 PM

That's usually a scam, you know. Original research? How are we to know this is real?

-Crissa

**Seerah** · 03-19-11, 11:05 PM

Not always...

Grimsin · 03-19-11, 11:08 PM

Asking for real id conversations though is risky. That provides people with your account login name basically. I would only do this if you have a authenticator.

Seerah - do you have inside info that this person is legit?

**Seerah** · 03-19-11, 11:34 PM

No, I do not. But I prefer not to be accusatory.

Though you are correct - one should always be careful.

timmerino · 03-19-11, 11:42 PM

I'm sorry, I didn't consider that one might think that this is a scam. If you feel at all uncomfortable chatting over RealID, I would be more than happy to use any other IM service. I have actually conducted a number of interviews over Gmail's IM, but I could definitely use any other IM.

As to verifying my identity: my name is Tim Arnold. I am a dual Master's degree candidate in Information Studies and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. In both disciplines I mainly focus on new media, online communities and online culture. I can provide you with links to various net profiles which verify this information:

Here is a short profile on the website of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies which lists my name and my enrollment in the dual degree program (along with a really unfortunate photo of me, ugh).

This is the website for the grant-funded program in videogame preservation at the School of Information at UT for which I am a research assistant.

I also have a Twitter account and a LibraryThing profile which corroborate some of the information I listed above.

I will definitely make copies of my final paper available to all of my interviewees, and with luck it will be published in the proceedings of the Digital Games Research Association. I applied to speak about this research project on WoW Addons at their conference next September. I'll find out whether my proposal was accepted next month.

If there is anything else that I can do to set your mind at ease, please let me know!

timmerino · 03-20-11, 12:32 AM

Also, just to explain why I asked to conduct the interview over RealID - up to this point, most of my interviews have been with AddOn users and I have found that it has been helpful to interview people about AddOns in the environment in which they use them so that they can easily refer to their AddOns during the interview if they need to. So RealID has been my preferred method of communication, though, as I mentioned earlier, I have conducted interviews over other IM services and I'm more than willing to do so again.

Tim