Overview of problems, chances and practices of integrating UX and Open Source Software development (ideally based on research)

Design Lounge Communication and collaboration
2

Some results from reviewing papers, among others the ones at @victoria-bondarchuk repository with research on FOSS Design

@jdittrich wrote on github

  • There are incentives to introduce new features to open source software. Basically, there is few punishment for adding some functionality and probably quite some incentives to do so. (Usability in open source software development: Opinions and practice, Andreasen)
  • There are no incentives of removing features, on the contrary
    • Power users will be annoyed (someone will have liked the feature)
    • You will get rid of functionality someone else programmed in their free time, they won’t be happy
    • Decision making will be based on consensus (Usability in open source software development: Opinions and practice, Andreasen); there are few usability experts, many non-experts and many opinions about not removing or substantially changing a feature.
  • Creating code is seen as good/doing something, discussions, alignment etc. is seen as not doing something/not helpful (Enabling User Centered Design Processes in Open Source Communities,
  • Developers are not typical end users (The Usability of Open Source Software, Nicols, Twidale | Enabling User Centered Design Processes in Open Source Communities Mads Bødker)
  • Hard to modularize open source software (The Usability of Open Source Software, Nicols, Twidale)
2 Likes