Open Source Design
Saturday, July 25, 2009 at 5:20PM Open Source Software (OSS) is an interesting phenomenon. The idea of having many developers working individually and together for free to create an offering for others to use is truly intriguing. I'd recommend reading Chris Anderson's new book, "Free: The Future o
f a Radical Price" for an explanation for the motivation behind this type of free contribution. I've been interested for some time in the aspects of Open Source software that are done well and the aspects that aren't done as well. I've also been interested in the related issue of the relative contribution to Open Source projects by developers versus designers. Let's first start with the general interest in Open Source Software. I asked my Twitter followers to take a poll asking them what type of software they preferred and fully 65% indicated that they prefer open source software. The reasons given included the fact that it is free and that they like the philosophy behind it. However, the reasons often given for preferring proprietary/commercial software is better design and support. When I asked the followers who are designers whether they had contributed to an open source project, only 11 percent said that they had and 95 percent were of the view that we needed a better system for having designers contribute to open source projects.
Many of the open source projects I've seen do need help in the area of user experience design. There are exceptions but most of those involve design contributed from a company that directly funds that work and often that results in a commercial offering. In fact, some would argue that it is the addition of good user experience design that provides the business value to create a commercial product from an open source project. Is that the only way to improve the design of open source projects? I'd very much appreciate it if you would use the comment section below to provide any ideas you may have on how to improve the design of open source software.
Twitter, design, open source, poll
Reader Comments (5)
Karel,
Great post. As someone coming from an HCI/Design background now working in OSS enterprise software development (Red Hat), I too am very intrigued by the intersection of design and Open Source. There’s a great website for an initiative that promotes usability in Free/Libre/Open-Source Software (FLOSS) development: http://www.openusability.org/
There’s also a great article here from Matt Asay on what OSS can learn from Apple about design: http://bit.ly/3eStiH
I do believe that the hardest part is determining a way to get designers involved in OSS projects because there usually is a steeper “technical cost of entry” to the projects. Also, I do not believe there is a good reporting/bug tool available that would enable an abstraction between the technical basis of the project and a particular usability problem encountered.
Ronak
@HCINews
Karel,
I've been interested in the usability of open source for a while, mostly as a FSOSS end user. More recently, I've taken an interest into the structure of open source development communities - why people contribute and how the structure impacts the form of the software created.
One thing many people have noted is the culture within those open source software development communities, which often have an image (if not an outright reality) of valuing only contributions in code. This makes it pretty hard for design professionals to participate, because those contributions are of a less visibly tangible nature (something like mocking up an elegant solution to a well-documented difficulty faced by users, for instance), but which might do as much for the perception of the software as any backend optimization.
Making communities welcome to non-code contributions can often be difficult, because many contributors stridently believe in the meritocracy of open source methods, and determining the merit of non-code contributions often forces people to question the assumptions and values underlying a "do-ocracy."
I'm most familiar with the Drupal CMS project, but other interesting projects to look at include Firefox and perhaps Ubuntu Linux. Just stumbled upon this interesting article looking at Drupal, Firefox, as well as Bugzilla (relevant to Ronak's comment above, perhaps): http://mairin.wordpress.com/2009/05/14/notes-on-the-user-experience-in-open-source-panel-at-sigchi-boston-april-2009/
This Keynote from OSCON this year also has a lot to say about nurturing cultures that welcome diversity in open source communities, which I think is key in being able to make things more usable:
http://infotrope.net/blog/2009/07/25/standing-out-in-the-crowd-my-oscon-keynote/
With your experience in the many nuances of successful design process, I look forward to following your thinking on open source.
Karen Quinn Fung
@counti8
Thanks Ronak and Karen for your comments and great links. Seems to me that the existing user experience design community focussed on FLOSS is well-intentioned but, as you say, working sub-optimally in many ways. The website you mentioned, Ronak, lists many projects looking for UXD help but there don't appear to be many or any in fact listed that have successfully had UXD contributions. Maybe those projects exist and, if they do, they should be featured on the site to reinforce the successful contributions of UXD to Open Source projects.
The links you provided, Karen, reinforce how larger Open Source projects have managed to incorporate design contributions to some degree despite the many identified challenges.
Seems to me that market pressures on Open Source projects will help drive the need for better design and that this will drive the need for more effective leveraging of UXD skills on projects.
I'm working on an Open Source project at the moment that has a very healthy understanding of the importance of design and welcomes design contributions enthusiastically. I think we'll see that more and more in the future as the overall ecosystem of software development evolves to appropriately embrace design. Despite the progress being made, there's still a lot more to do including, importantly, the simple terminology that people involved in Open Source projects aren't all developers.
Here's one of the best references for this if you haven't read it yet though it's focusing only on usability http://mpt.net.nz/archive/2008/08/01/free-software-usability
Let me share one of my experiences with Open Source Design. About a week ago, I started the initiative of proposing the construction of a list of UX principles for Ubuntu. Some members of the community (including hired designers by Canonical) found the idea interesting. There were different views that helped polish the list. However, I am really busy lately so I haven't done anything for it this week yet and the discussion isn't moving forward. I don't know if it is going to be approved or at least used in any way one day.
Generally, contributing to Open Source design feels a bit messy. People seem to aim at different directions. This is why I want a list of UX principles that everyone will follow. The problem with Open Source design seems to be its need for a more professional process. Such a process is not impossible in Open Source. I believe that it is happening in the world of developers but not yet in that of the designers. With Ubuntu's hired UX designers and design-savvy geeks like me, Open Source shall have a great UX. I feel that more and more people are realizing the value of UX. Not all Linux geeks are programmers. Some focus exclusively in design and they shall unite one day.
One open source project that's doing some amazing UX/design work at the moment is Gallery 3 (http://gallery.menalto.com/).
I used Gallery and Gallery 2 for my online photo album but became disillusioned by Gallery 2's awful usability and started to look around for another application. Then I received a usability survey from the team and I discovered they'd started ground-up redesign work on Gallery 3.
I blogged about it here: http://www.lauracowen.co.uk/blog/2009/04/13/gallery-3-lessons-learned-in-consumability/
And I've been following their alpha/beta releases.
I think (going on what I've seen so far) this is a really good example of what an open source project can do.