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Figure 1. Sample tasks of potential usability experts and contributors
background in order to increase the usability of
resulting product. Like Apache project, many
open source projects are meritocracy, therefore
usability experts need to provide a series of strong
evidences to support their suggestions, otherwise
developers do not tend to compare them with any
other generic contributor with an opinion.
While there's little evidence that F/OSS proj-
ects are structured in terms of usability knowledge
and expertise, there are both active (i.e., those who
share their knowledge by sharing ideas, attend-
ing discussions and giving feedback) and passive
HCI experts, for whom we need to identify the
amount of contribution for each entity. We also
do not have a measured relationship between
usability and F/OSS projects. Figure 1 gives a
more detailed overview of a F/OSS project with
developers and the process from a passive user
to an active HCI expert. Potential tasks are also
given in boxes.
Usability in open source community does
exist but rather is considered as a matter of taste.
Indeed, each developer has a personal way of
implementing user interfaces. In Table 1, three cri-
teria (employment of HCI experts, communication
between HCI experts and project developers and
reporting a testing process) are discussed between
open source and closed source model, together
with advantages and disadvantages. Since some
of the arguments are subject to debate, these are
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