Open source user experience - IxDA discussion

A useful thread from IxDA on Open source user experience useful to use for the further discussion of OSS with ID and the way in which this may continue to be developed further.

"Q - I've been thinking about the open source movement.

I know very little of the UX community's involvement, so firstly I'm posting to ask what has been happening so far. Mozilla, Open Office and some others must have had serious UX involvement. Secondly, if it doesn't already exist, I wonder if there's the potential for us to structure some kind of virtual agency that would allow us to engage effectively.

Few thoughts

- In my opinion, several OS projects are incredible achievements that are hampered by small usability problems or even just language issues. I really believe in the movement. I think some corners of it need our help.

- UX involvement, unlike coder involvement, might be more effective if the people weren't aligned to a single project, so maybe the movement doesn't naturally structure itself to include us.

- Be a good way to spread the UX word, and a good way for us to collaborate and learn from each other. Might be especially useful for people trainign in UX. Maybe meetings like the book club but instead the topic is an open source project that everyone's looked in advance.

Any thoughts? Knowledge of UX involvement so far?

Tom "

And some further comments from the thread

"I just ran into Paula Bach's work on UX and Open Source, in particular:

"Designers Wanted: Participation and the User Experience in Open Source Software"

http://cscl.ist.psu.edu/public /users /pbach /paper1367 -bach.pdf

A nice read ..."

"For more linkage, see http://delicious.com/andyed/opensource+usability The openusability.org site Adrian referenced is a sort of "virtual agency". The Mozilla efforts are I think the culmination of a rising trend here, capping work in Usability sprints, along with more dedicated projects in GIMP, Drupal, and Wordpress.

There's more to the Mozilla picture than described here so far — "Test Pilot" aims to get a representative 1% of the firefox user base for instrumentation aided remote usability exercises:
http://labs.mozilla.com/2009/01/test-pilot-vision/

Cheers,
Andy "

"andy at polaine dot com

Monday 1:57pm

I haven't gone and read those links yet and maybe the answer is there, but I would be interested to hear about how interaction/user- experience design can be worked into the open-source model.

I can't help feeling I'm being naive here, but the checking in and out of code, branching and patching and the control of that process seems to suit code way more than it does, say, wireframes or design concepts.

The latter are, by their nature, rougher than finished code would be, yet would need to go through a typical open-source process of being added to the 'build' in some way and good ideas, or too rough ideas might get killed off in the process.

How have people gone about this workflow and process in existing open- source projects? The Yahoo! pattern library process seems like it could be a good model: http://tinyurl.com/by4bq

Best,

Andy Poline "

"While bring UX to open source is not impossible and there are great people putting up a great fight. These are more the exceptions than the rule.

We need to realize that until the culture of OSS evolves from one where code contribution is king, to one where idea contribution (in ALL its forms, including code) is king, it will remain difficult.

I think there needs to be a bit of a revolution and one I'm hoping to have something to do with (maybe even with Aza's help) . In the spirit of Carpe Diem, I really want to "just do it" and create an OSS project, even if only experimental that starts out with attempting to answer the question, "What would a designer led open source software project look like?"

The goal isn't to negate the developer, but create a space totally different from before. The outcome is not to learn how to lead developers, but to create a space for exploring design in its relation to development in a new way and see what succeeds and what fails. The ultimate goal would be to work towards modeling a new culture where business, development and design can co-mingle/lead OSS initiatives/projects.

-- dave "

A great and useful point made here with how to lead developers to a new space for the design and development of software - this is a perspective that the IEAT process for me is having to incorporate and provide a bridge for the development process into the design/design ethnography process and vice versa.

Again more about dealing with the multiple perspectives that technolgoy design is facing.