Collaboration in Open Source Domains - Collaborative Technologies and Applications for Interactive Information Design - page 171

Table 1. Usability methods and models in distributed groups and closed groups

Distributed Groups Closed Groups

Criteria Structure (Dis)advantages Structure (Dis)advantages

Employment Weak (+) fast

(+) not subject to a technical barrier
(-) low degree

Better than open source
model

(+) well defined criteria
(-) potentially undiscov-
ered

Communication Virtual (-) informal

(+-) online
(-) asynchronous
(-) usually limited vision
(-) control of the software by pro-
grammers

Physical (*) formal

(*) well defined
(+) direct communication
(*) hierarchical, top-down
approach

Reporting and
testing

Emerging (-) no well defined tasks and guide-

lines
(-) no well defined templates
(+-) less comprehensive
(*) generally indirect communica-
tion

Well established (+) direct communication

of experts with users

(+) Advantage (-) Disadvantage (*) Neutral

enlisted as neutral. In summary, usability in open
source model can be stated as weak (employment),
virtual (communication) and emerging (reporting
and testing). Similarly, usability in closed source
model can be described as better than open source
model (employment), physical (communication)
and well established (reporting and testing).
There are issues and concerns regarding com-
munication paths between usability experts and
F/OSS developers, targeting cognitive and social
norms:

frameworks by means of quality and quantity
compared to proprietary world, a minimum
experience of the software development
mental model is sought to build next genera-
tion user interfaces.

3. Developers do not have the benefits and

outcomes of working with a usability expert.
Personal contact between developer and us-
ability expert is often ignored, leaving little
or no space to get any form user feedback
and to show that the product does actually
not work the way the developers thought it
would. 1. Developers are uninformed about contex-

tual inquiry and user centered requirements
process, resulting in a lack of immediate
experience of observing product use in the
field.

4. Lack of scientific research in this field results

in a lack of respect in the validity of the field
of usability by software developers, and use
of scientific usability metrics the developers
can relate to, in order to assess their applica-
tions' user interface.

2. Usability experts do not have a detailed

understanding of how F/OSS projects work,
usually coming on strongly as critics, rather
than contributors, builders or problem solv-
ers. While part of this is perception, another
part is the tendency that usability experts
lack the ability or willingness to develop
software. In an open source world with a lim-
ited set of tools and immature development

usAbility ProCesses

Usability of computer applications is becoming
more important with the increase of relatively
uneducated people with less skill to cope with