Gateways 2018

While interest in new technologies can be immediately apparent, barriers to access are not always clear. Iterative, participatory, interface design is one approach to bridging disciplinary barriers to democratizing new technologies. Here we discuss what we learned applying these methods to the development of Immerj, an application to simplify the post-production of immersive video content, developed by students at the Texas Advanced Computing Center. Much like gateways, Immerj provides easy access to high-end technologies. Students had the opportunity to engage with stakeholders including journalists at the Washington Post, National Public Radio, and many other local and national organizations in order to guide the design of their Knight Foundation funded prototype. We will discuss what we learned and how stakeholder input helped our engineers understand and meet the stakeholders' needs, offering implications for gateways of all types.