A Review of Tool Support for User-Related Communication in FLOSS Development
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paper_title: Integrating HCI Specialists into Open Source Software Development Projects

paper_content:

Typical open source software (OSS) development projects are organized around technically talented developers, whose communication is based on technical aspects and source code. Decision-making power is gained through proven competence and activity in the project, and non-technical end-user opinions are too many times neglected. In addition, also human-computer interaction (HCI) specialists have encountered difficulties in trying to participate in OSS projects, because there seems to be no clear authority and responsibility for them. In this paper, based on HCI and OSS literature, we introduce an extended OSS development project organization model that adds a new level of communication and roles for attending human aspects of software. The proposed model makes the existence of HCI specialists visible in the projects, and promotes interaction between developers and the HCI specialists in the course of a project.
---
paper_title: Understanding how and why open source contributors use diagrams in the development of Ubuntu

paper_content:

Some of the most interesting differences between Open Source Software (OSS) development and commercial co-located software development lie in the communication and collaboration practices of these two groups of developers. One interesting practice is that of diagramming. Though well studied and important in many aspects of co-located software development (including communication and collaboration among developers), its role in OSS development has not been thoroughly studied. In this paper, we report our investigation on how and why Ubuntu contributors use diagrams in their work. Our study shows that diagrams are not actively used in many scenarios where they commonly would in co-located software development efforts. We describe differences in the use and practices of diagramming, their possible reasons, and present design considerations for potential systems aimed at better supporting diagram use in OSS development.
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paper_title: Effective Work Practices for FLOSS Development: A Model and Propositions

paper_content:

We review the literature on Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) development and on software development, distributed work and teams more generally to develop a theoretical model to explain the performance of FLOSS teams. The proposed model is based on Hackman's model of effectiveness of work teams, with coordination theory and collective mind to extend Hackman's model by elaborating team practices relevant to effectiveness in software development. We propose a set of propositions to guide further research.
---
paper_title: Coordinating open-source software development

paper_content:

Open-source software (OSS) projects are arguably the quintessential example of distributed software development, with their openness to a large pool of world-wide contributors and their loose organizational structure. To cope with the demands which this openness and fluidity place on the development process, open-source projects have evolved their own methods and organization. This paper looks at the ways some of the major and most successful OSS projects deal with the issue of coordination among their many contributors. Although each of the projects examined in this paper developed some unique practices, there are also significant commonalities. The paper then goes on to indicate some of the problems caused by the existing practices and puts forward some possible approaches to OSS coordination that could make OSS development more efficient.
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paper_title: Designing for discovery: opening the hood for open-source end user tinkering

paper_content:

According to the Free Software Movement, the user ought to have "the freedoms to make changes, and to publish improved versions" and "to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs". The Open Source Initiative expects users to access source code, explaining that "you can't evolve programs without modifying them. Since our purpose is to make evolution easy, we require that modification be made easy". These philosophies can shape a unique perspective on software usability that has not been addressed thoroughly in the open-source domain. That is: how to design user-interfaces and tools that facilitate access to source code and encourage the behaviors envisioned above, namely, to improve the code, to personalize it, to learn from it, and to share it. And, as the Open Source Initiative recommends, to make this easy. In addition to presenting this research perspective, we suggest some fruitful approaches to answering these questions and our current and future steps.
---
paper_title: Exploring Usability Discussions in Open Source Development

paper_content:

The public nature of discussion in open source projects provides a valuable resource for understanding the mechanisms of open source software development. In this paper we explore how open source projects address issues of usability. We examine bug reports of several projects to characterise how developers address and resolve issues concerning user interfaces and interaction design. We discuss how bug reporting and discussion systems can be improved to better support bug reporters and open source developers.
---
paper_title: Professional usability in open source projects: GNOME, OpenOffice.org, NetBeans

paper_content:

Working as a usability professional in the open source arena is a challenging task. The decentralized and engineering-driven approach of open source projects can be at odds with corporate processes and usability engineering methodologies. Nonetheless, there is great potential for large corporations to contribute to open source projects. Providing usability know-how that leads to usable and useful products is a win-win situation for developers, the corporations, and -- most importantly -- the users.
---
paper_title: Open Source Software and the "Private-Collective" Innovation Model: Issues for Organization Science

paper_content:

Currently, two models of innovation are prevalent in organization science. The "private investment" model assumes returns to the innovator result from private goods and efficient regimes of intellectual property protection. The "collective action" model assumes that under conditions of market failure, innovators collaborate in order to produce a public good. The phenomenon of open source software development shows that users program to solve their own as well as shared technical problems, and freely reveal their innovations without appropriating private returns from selling the software. In this paper, we propose that open source software development is an exemplar of a compound "private-collective" model of innovation that contains elements of both the private investment and the collective action models and can offer society the "best of both worlds" under many conditions. We describe a new set of research questions this model raises for scholars in organization science. We offer some details regarding the types of data available for open source projects in order to ease access for researchers who are unfamiliar with these, and also offer some advice on conducting empirical studies on open source software development processes.
---
paper_title: An analysis of involvement of HCI experts in distributed software development: practical issues

paper_content:

Traditionally, free and open source software (F/OSS) developers have focused more on the features of a specific application, most of the time ignoring the necessity of user-centric design. This has mainly stemmed from the fact that developers have little interaction with HCI studies, knowledge bases and reports. Moreover, the lack of user interface designers has resulted in a lack of awareness of this area. As a consequence, the user centric design phenomenon within F/OSS applications has been neglected. In this paper, we have mentioned various problems that would slow down a F/OSS project development towards a user-engineered software, and investigated the ways that HCI experts and developers interact with each other and researched bug reporting systems by means of eligibility to issue usability bugs. For the conclusion part, we have explored possible ways to achieve a user-centric design in a project with asynchronous interaction among geographically distributed developers.
---
paper_title: USABILITY IN OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT: OPINIONS AND PRACTICE

paper_content:

Open Source Software (OSS) development has gained significant importance in the production of soft-ware products. Open Source Software developers have produced systems with a functionality that is competitive with similar proprietary software developed by commercial software organizations. Yet OSS is usually designed for and by power-users, and OSS products have been criticized for having little or no emphasis on usability. We have conducted an empirical study of the developers’ opinions about usability and the way usability engineering is practiced in a variety of OSS projects. The study included a questionnaire survey and a series of interviews, where we interviewed OSS contributors with both technical and usability backgrounds. Overall we found that OSS developers are interested in usability, but in practice it is not top priority, and OSS projects rarely employs systematic usability evaluation. Most of the efforts are based on common sense. Most developers have a very limited understanding of usability, and there is a lack of resources and evaluation methods fitting into the OSS paradigm.
---
paper_title: Major HCI Challenges for Open Source Software Adoption and Development

paper_content:

The aim of the paper is to identify and discuss major challenges for OSS from an HCI perspective, so as to aid the adoption and development processes for end-users, developers and organizations. The paper focuses on four important HCI concerns: product usability, support for user and development communities, accessibility and software usability and proposes areas for further research on the basis of related work and own experiences.
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paper_title: Oppositional and activist new media: remediation, reconfiguration, participation

paper_content:

Over the last decade, the major firms and cultural institutions that have dominated media and information industries in the U.S. and globally have been challenged by people adopting new technologies to intervene and participate in mainstream media culture. In this paper key genres and features of oppositional and activist new media are described and cases are presented, and their implications for participatory design are briefly outlined.
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paper_title: Tactical Approaches for Alleviating Distance inGlobal software Development

paper_content:

To overcome the problem of distance in global software development, various managers are experimenting and quickly adjusting their tactical approaches. We discuss some emerging approaches and explain their motivations from conceptual and practical perspectives. The most intuitive approach for alleviating distance is to apply communication technologies, but this is not our focus. Rather, we examine tactics that go beyond communication technologies, tactics aimed at reducing intensive collaboration, national and organizational cultural differences, and temporal distance.
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paper_title: Enabling user centered design processes in open source communities

paper_content:

Drawing on tenets from action research, this paper presents a yearlong intervention designed to facilitate knowledge of actual users and use in an Open Source Software (OSS) development community. Results from the interventions are presented and the influence of central characteristics of the OSS community and its communication is discussed. Initial findings show that the ideology and praxis based approach of the OSS community, as well as their primary media of communication, present a challenge to the introduction of end-user issues.
---
paper_title: Social Dynamics of FLOSS Team Communication Across Channels

paper_content:

This paper extends prior investigation into the social dynamics of free and open source (FLOSS) teams by examining the methodological questions arising from research using social network analysis on open source projects. We evaluate the validity of data sampling by examining dynamics of communication centralization, which vary across multiple communication channels. We also introduce a method for intensity-based smoothing in dynamic social network analysis.
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paper_title: The social structure of free and open source software development

paper_content:

Metaphors, such as the Cathedral and Bazaar, used to describe the organization of FLOSS projects typically place them in sharp contrast to proprietary development by emphasizing FLOSS’s distinctive social and communications structures. But what do we really know about the communication patterns of FLOSS projects? How generalizable are the projects that have been studied? Is there consistency across FLOSS projects? Questioning the assumption of distinctiveness is important because practitioner–advocates from within the FLOSS community rely on features of social structure to describe and account for some of the advantages of FLOSS production. ::: ::: To address this question, we examined 120 project teams from SourceForge, representing a wide range of FLOSS project types, for their communications centralization as revealed in the interactions in the bug tracking system. We found that FLOSS development teams vary widely in their communications centralization, from projects completely centered on one developer to projects that are highly decentralized and exhibit a distributed pattern of conversation between developers and active users. ::: ::: We suggest, therefore, that it is wrong to assume that FLOSS projects are distinguished by a particular social structure merely because they are FLOSS. Our findings suggest that FLOSS projects might have to work hard to achieve the expected development advantages which have been assumed to flow from "going open." In addition, the variation in communications structure across projects means that communications centralization is useful for comparisons between FLOSS teams. We found that larger FLOSS teams tend to have more decentralized communication patterns, a finding that suggests interesting avenues for further research examining, for example, the relationship between communications structure and code modularity.
---
paper_title: Coordinating open-source software development

paper_content:

Open-source software (OSS) projects are arguably the quintessential example of distributed software development, with their openness to a large pool of world-wide contributors and their loose organizational structure. To cope with the demands which this openness and fluidity place on the development process, open-source projects have evolved their own methods and organization. This paper looks at the ways some of the major and most successful OSS projects deal with the issue of coordination among their many contributors. Although each of the projects examined in this paper developed some unique practices, there are also significant commonalities. The paper then goes on to indicate some of the problems caused by the existing practices and puts forward some possible approaches to OSS coordination that could make OSS development more efficient.
---
paper_title: Designers wanted: participation and the user experience in open source software development

paper_content:

We present design concepts and related mockups that support the user experience for projects hosted on CodePlex, an open source project hosting website. Rationale for the design concepts is grounded in the open source literature and a thirteen-week study with the CodePlex team. We propose that fostering ways to build trust, providing opportunities for merit, supporting crossover of work activities, and supporting user experience (UX) best practices in CodePlex will help dismantle the social and technological barriers for UX and encourage UX designer participation. We address UX designer motivation as a challenge for participation and conclude that the mockups presented are a first step in furthering the user experience in open source software development.
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paper_title: Harnessing the wisdom of crowds in wikipedia: quality through coordination

paper_content:

Wikipedia's success is often attributed to the large numbers of contributors who improve the accuracy, completeness and clarity of articles while reducing bias. However, because of the coordination needed to write an article collaboratively, adding contributors is costly. We examined how the number of editors in Wikipedia and the coordination methods they use affect article quality. We distinguish between explicit coordination, in which editors plan the article through communication, and implicit coordination, in which a subset of editors structure the work by doing the majority of it. Adding more editors to an article improved article quality only when they used appropriate coordination techniques and was harmful when they did not. Implicit coordination through concentrating the work was more helpful when many editors contributed, but explicit coordination through communication was not. Both types of coordination improved quality more when an article was in a formative stage. These results demonstrate the critical importance of coordination in effectively harnessing the "wisdom of the crowd" in online production environments.
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paper_title: The Mysteries of Open Source Software: Black and White and Red All Over?

paper_content:

Open Source Software (OSS) has attracted enormous media and research attention since the term was coined in February 1998. The concept itself is founded on the paradoxical premise that software source code-the 'crown jewels' for many proprietary software companies-should be provided freely to anyone who wishes to see it. Given this fundamental initial paradox, it is perhaps hardly surprising that the OSS concept is characterised by contradictions, paradoxes and tensions throughout. In this paper we focus specifically on the following issues in relation to OSS: the cathedral v. bazaar development approach; collectivism v. individualism, the bitter strife within the OSS community itself (OSS v. OSS), and between OSS and the Free Software Foundation (OSS v. FSF); whether OSS represents a paradigm shift in the software industry; whether the software is truly open-the Berkeley Conundrum, as we have termed it here; whether OSS truly is high quality software; and whether OSS is a 'one size fits all,' representing the future model for all software development.
---
paper_title: Social Dynamics of FLOSS Team Communication Across Channels

paper_content:

This paper extends prior investigation into the social dynamics of free and open source (FLOSS) teams by examining the methodological questions arising from research using social network analysis on open source projects. We evaluate the validity of data sampling by examining dynamics of communication centralization, which vary across multiple communication channels. We also introduce a method for intensity-based smoothing in dynamic social network analysis.
---
paper_title: The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary

paper_content:

From the Publisher: ::: The Cathedral and the Bazaar is a must read for anyone who cares about the future of the computer industry or the dynamics of the information economy. Eric Raymond's persuasive manifesto defining the open source revolution has helped propel this collaborative approach to software development into the mainstream. As corporations continue to adopt technologies like Linux, Apache, and Perl, open source is proving to be the competitive advantage in the Internet Age.
---
paper_title: Integrating HCI Specialists into Open Source Software Development Projects

paper_content:

Typical open source software (OSS) development projects are organized around technically talented developers, whose communication is based on technical aspects and source code. Decision-making power is gained through proven competence and activity in the project, and non-technical end-user opinions are too many times neglected. In addition, also human-computer interaction (HCI) specialists have encountered difficulties in trying to participate in OSS projects, because there seems to be no clear authority and responsibility for them. In this paper, based on HCI and OSS literature, we introduce an extended OSS development project organization model that adds a new level of communication and roles for attending human aspects of software. The proposed model makes the existence of HCI specialists visible in the projects, and promotes interaction between developers and the HCI specialists in the course of a project.
---
paper_title: Perceptions and practices of usability in the free/open source software (FoSS) community

paper_content:

This paper presents results from a study examining perceptions and practices of usability in the free/open source software (FOSS) community. 27 individuals associated with 11 different FOSS projects were interviewed to understand how they think about, act on, and are motivated to address usability issues. Our results indicate that FOSS project members possess rather sophisticated notions of software usability, which collectively mirror definitions commonly found in HCI textbooks. Our study also uncovered a wide range of practices that ultimately work to improve software usability. Importantly, these activities are typically based on close, direct interpersonal relationships between developers and their core users, a group of users who closely follow the project and provide high quality, respected feedback. These relationships, along with positive feedback from other users, generate social rewards that serve as the primary motivations for attending to usability issues on a day-to-day basis. These findings suggest a need to reconceptualize HCI methods to better fit this culture of practice and its corresponding value system.
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paper_title: How power users help and hinder open bug reporting

paper_content:

Many power users that contribute to open source projects have no intention of becoming regular contributors; they just want a bug fixed or a feature implemented. How often do these users participate in open source projects and what do they contribute? To investigate these questions, we analyzed the reports of Mozilla contributors who reported problems but were never assigned problems to fix. These analyses revealed that over 11 years and millions of reports, most of these 150,000 users reported non-issues that devolved into technical support, redundant reports with little new information, or narrow, expert feature requests. Reports that did lead to changes were reported by a comparably small group of experienced, frequent reporters, mostly before the release of Firefox 1. These results suggest that the primary value of open bug reporting is in recruiting talented reporters, and not in deriving value from the masses.
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paper_title: Usability and free/libre/open source software SIG: HCI expertise and design rationale

paper_content:

The usability of Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) is a new challenge for HCI professionals. Although HCI professionals are working on usability issues in FLOSS, the CHI community has not yet organized with respect to FLOSS. The purpose of this SIG is to bring together HCI professionals and researchers to discuss current issues in FLOSS. Specifically, this SIG looks at usability, the role of HCI expertise, and design rationale in FLOSS projects.
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paper_title: Participatory usability: supporting proactive users

paper_content:

After software has been released the opportunities for users to influence development can often be limited. In this paper we review the research on post-deployment usability and make explicit its connections to open source software development. We describe issues involved in the design of end-user reporting tools with reference to the Safari web browser and a digital library prototype.
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paper_title: Integrating user experience into free/libre open source software: CHI 2009 special interest group

paper_content:

The importance of software in daily life for casual and business purposes has led to a strong increase in the formal integration of usability in commercial software development processes. However, usability still appears to be largely an afterthought for Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS). The intent of this Special Interest Group (SIG) is to encourage participation by the user experience (UX) community and to identify solutions for better integration of UX into the FLOSS development process.
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paper_title: A case study of open source software development: the Apache server

paper_content:

According to its proponents, open source style software development has the capacity to compete successfully, and perhaps in many cases displace, traditional commercial development methods. In order to begin investigating such claims, we examine the development process of a major open source application, the Apache web server. By using email archives of source code change history and problem reports we quantify aspects of developer participation, core team size, code ownership, productivity, defect density, and problem resolution interval for this OSS project. This analysis reveals a unique process, which performs well on important measures. We conclude that hybrid forms of development that borrow the most effective techniques from both the OSS and commercial worlds may lead to high performance software processes.
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paper_title: Involving reflective users in design

paper_content:

We draw on the idea of the reflective practitioner to consider how end users can directly contribute to user experience design discussions in open source projects. People with expertise in their own use context but without programming or user experience analysis and design skills can provide reflections on personal experiences.
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paper_title: How Open Source Software Works: Free User-to-User Assistance

paper_content:

Research into free and open source software development projects has so far largely focused on how the major tasks of software development are organized and motivated. But a complete project requires the execution of “mundane but necessary” tasks as well. In this paper, we explore how the mundane but necessary task of field support is organized in the case of Apache web server software, and why some project participants are motivated to provide this service gratis to others. We find that the Apache field support system functions effectively. We also find that, when we partition the help system into its component tasks, 98% of the effort expended by information providers in fact returns direct learning benefits to those providers. This finding considerably reduces the puzzle of why information providers are willing to perform this task “for free.” Implications are discussed. © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
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paper_title: Designers wanted: participation and the user experience in open source software development

paper_content:

We present design concepts and related mockups that support the user experience for projects hosted on CodePlex, an open source project hosting website. Rationale for the design concepts is grounded in the open source literature and a thirteen-week study with the CodePlex team. We propose that fostering ways to build trust, providing opportunities for merit, supporting crossover of work activities, and supporting user experience (UX) best practices in CodePlex will help dismantle the social and technological barriers for UX and encourage UX designer participation. We address UX designer motivation as a challenge for participation and conclude that the mockups presented are a first step in furthering the user experience in open source software development.
---
paper_title: Exploring Usability Discussions in Open Source Development

paper_content:

The public nature of discussion in open source projects provides a valuable resource for understanding the mechanisms of open source software development. In this paper we explore how open source projects address issues of usability. We examine bug reports of several projects to characterise how developers address and resolve issues concerning user interfaces and interaction design. We discuss how bug reporting and discussion systems can be improved to better support bug reporters and open source developers.
---
paper_title: Professional usability in open source projects: GNOME, OpenOffice.org, NetBeans

paper_content:

Working as a usability professional in the open source arena is a challenging task. The decentralized and engineering-driven approach of open source projects can be at odds with corporate processes and usability engineering methodologies. Nonetheless, there is great potential for large corporations to contribute to open source projects. Providing usability know-how that leads to usable and useful products is a win-win situation for developers, the corporations, and -- most importantly -- the users.
---
paper_title: Shared Knowledge Construction Process in an Open-Source Software Development Community: An Investigation of the Gallery Community

paper_content:

An investigation was conducted to study shared knowledge construction process in an Open-Source Software Development (OSSD) community. Using a qualitative study approach, we examined the resources, tools, and activities in the Gallery community to create a rich description of the interrelationships among people, activities, and media. Of particular interest was how the individuals contributed to the building of a shared knowledge base through collaborative problem-solving and decision-making processes, mediated with the OSSD environment. The study indicated that the collaboration process was symbolized by multiple rounds of discussions, which were means to pool individuals' expertise and experiences to obtain quality problem-solving and decision-making outcomes. The study also revealed that the OSSD environment mediated the collaborative efforts through virtual collaboration space, visual organization, and communication tools. The findings have important implications for designing effective instruction specifically for computing disciplines in promoting students' collaborative problem solving and decision making.
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paper_title: Toward an understanding of the motivation of open source software developers

paper_content:

An Open Source Software (OSS) project is unlikely to be successful unless there is an accompanied community that provides the platform for developers and users to collaborate. Members of such communities are volunteers whose motivation to participate and contribute is of essential importance to the success of OSS projects. In this paper, we aim to create an understanding of what motivates people to participate in OSS communities. We theorize that learning is one of the motivational forces. Our theory is grounded in the learning theory of Legitimate Peripheral Participation, and is supported by analyzing the social structure of OSS communities and the co-evolution between OSS systems and communities. We also discuss practical implications of our theory for creating and maintaining sustainable OSS communities as well as for software engineering research and education.
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paper_title: Visualizing social interaction in open source software projects

paper_content:

Open source software projects such as Apache and Mozilla present an opportunity for information visualization. Since these projects typically require collaboration between developers located far apart, the amount of electronic communication between them is large. Our goal is to apply information visualization techniques to assist software engineering scientists and project managers with analyzing the data. We present a visualization technique that provides an intuitive, time-series, interactive summary view of the social groups that form, evolve and vanish during the entire lifetime of the project. This visualization helps software engineering researchers understand the organization, structure, and evolution of the communication and collaboration activities of a large, complex software project.
---
paper_title: An analysis of involvement of HCI experts in distributed software development: practical issues

paper_content:

Traditionally, free and open source software (F/OSS) developers have focused more on the features of a specific application, most of the time ignoring the necessity of user-centric design. This has mainly stemmed from the fact that developers have little interaction with HCI studies, knowledge bases and reports. Moreover, the lack of user interface designers has resulted in a lack of awareness of this area. As a consequence, the user centric design phenomenon within F/OSS applications has been neglected. In this paper, we have mentioned various problems that would slow down a F/OSS project development towards a user-engineered software, and investigated the ways that HCI experts and developers interact with each other and researched bug reporting systems by means of eligibility to issue usability bugs. For the conclusion part, we have explored possible ways to achieve a user-centric design in a project with asynchronous interaction among geographically distributed developers.
---
paper_title: A field study of the software design process for large systems

paper_content:

The problems of designing large software systems were studied through interviewing personnel from 17 large projects. A layered behavioral model is used to analyze how three of these problems—the thin spread of application domain knowledge, fluctuating and conflicting requirements, and communication bottlenecks and breakdowns—affected software productivity and quality through their impact on cognitive, social, and organizational processes.
---
paper_title: USABILITY IN OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT: OPINIONS AND PRACTICE

paper_content:

Open Source Software (OSS) development has gained significant importance in the production of soft-ware products. Open Source Software developers have produced systems with a functionality that is competitive with similar proprietary software developed by commercial software organizations. Yet OSS is usually designed for and by power-users, and OSS products have been criticized for having little or no emphasis on usability. We have conducted an empirical study of the developers’ opinions about usability and the way usability engineering is practiced in a variety of OSS projects. The study included a questionnaire survey and a series of interviews, where we interviewed OSS contributors with both technical and usability backgrounds. Overall we found that OSS developers are interested in usability, but in practice it is not top priority, and OSS projects rarely employs systematic usability evaluation. Most of the efforts are based on common sense. Most developers have a very limited understanding of usability, and there is a lack of resources and evaluation methods fitting into the OSS paradigm.
---
paper_title: Major HCI Challenges for Open Source Software Adoption and Development

paper_content:

The aim of the paper is to identify and discuss major challenges for OSS from an HCI perspective, so as to aid the adoption and development processes for end-users, developers and organizations. The paper focuses on four important HCI concerns: product usability, support for user and development communities, accessibility and software usability and proposes areas for further research on the basis of related work and own experiences.
---
paper_title: Supporting the user experience in free/libre/open source software development

paper_content:

With the increasing number and awareness of free/libre/open source software (FLOSS) projects, Internet users can download a FLOSS tool that meets just about any need. The user experience of projects, however, varies greatly and identifying FLOSS projects that offer a positive user experience (UX) is challenging. FLOSS projects center on software developer activities with little attention to user-centered design activities that could increase the user experience on the project. The purpose of this dissertation is to understand open source software ecology in order to bring support for user experience design activities on FLOSS projects. CodePlex, an open source project hosting website, serves as the open source software ecology. ::: The research consists of two phases, a descriptive science phase and a design science phase. In the descriptive phase fieldwork in the form of ethnomethodologically informed ethnography describes the everyday activities of three groups: the team that produces CodePlex, the participants who use CodePlex to produce open source projects, and user experience practitioners who bring their expertise to design software with a positive user experience. The descriptive phase also includes an analysis of activity awareness of the three groups. The design science phase consists of a claims analysis that provides design rationale for a design that proposes to support UX activities on CodePlex. The results show that activity awareness contributes to the socio-technical solution where UX activities can be supported as a new community of practice, with features that support building social capital. The UX support features include a UX workspace where UX contributors recognize their value and other features that support the presence of UX throughout the project site and the CodePlex community. ::: This dissertation contributes empirical materials from the descriptions of everyday activities of the three groups and analytic materials generated from the activity awareness and claims analyses that are translated into design representations. Specifically the contributions include (1) mechanisms of articulation work of the three groups and how the mechanisms contribute to the design representation; (2) the demonstration of a translation science in computersupported cooperative work (CSCW) and human-computer interaction (HCI); and (3) an understanding of how UX activities and software engineering activities integrate.
---
paper_title: Enabling user centered design processes in open source communities

paper_content:

Drawing on tenets from action research, this paper presents a yearlong intervention designed to facilitate knowledge of actual users and use in an Open Source Software (OSS) development community. Results from the interventions are presented and the influence of central characteristics of the OSS community and its communication is discussed. Initial findings show that the ideology and praxis based approach of the OSS community, as well as their primary media of communication, present a challenge to the introduction of end-user issues.
---
paper_title: Improving Open Source Software Usability

paper_content:

Usability of open source systems is becoming a relevant topic for investigation given the proliferation of open source software. General assumptions do not favor a positive relationship between the existing open source development model and good usability due to a host of social context reasons. In this paper we provide empirical evidence on this issue through a case study using an open source project called Ganttproject. Results point to likely deficiencies in the open source model. An analysis of this phenomena and some potential solutions for improving open source usability are proposed.
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paper_title: Usability Engineering: Scenario-Based Development of Human-Computer Interaction

paper_content:

Usability Engineering: Scenario-Based Development of Human-Computer Interaction is a radical departure from traditional books that emphasize theory and address experts. This book focuses on the realities of product development, showing how user interaction scenarios can make usability practices an integral part of interactive system development. As you'll learn, usability engineering is not the application of inflexible rules; it's a process of analysis, prototyping, and problem solving in which you evaluate tradeoffs, make reasoned decisions, and maximize the overall value of your product.
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paper_title: "Constructing the users" in open source software development: An interpretive case study of user participation

paper_content:

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to report findings from an interpretive case study on user participation in the open source software (OSS) development context.Design/methodology/approach – Through an empirical, interpretive case study and a literature review utilising the metaphor of text in the analysis, this paper provides a refined conceptualisation of user participation in OSS development.Findings – The paper reveals that different kinds of meanings have been attached to users and to their participation. User participation is both direct and indirect in the OSS development context. Some user groups actively take part in OSS development, while others are merely represented in it. Different kinds of intermediaries “representing the users” are identified.Research limitations/implications – The research is based on one case study on a small but active OSS project with an interest in users. Other kinds of OSS projects should be analysed. The analysis was focused on a discussion forum, but users can ...
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paper_title: The Usability Engineering Lifecycle: A Practitioner's Handbook for User Interface Design

paper_content:

A commitment to usability in user interface design and development offers enormous benefits, including greater user productivity, more competitive products, lower support costs, and a more efficient development process. But what does it mean to be committed to usability? Inside, a twenty-year expert answers this question in full, presenting the techniques of Usability Engineering as a series of product lifecycle tasks that result directly in easier-to-learn, easier-to-use software.You'll learn to perform a complete requirements analysis and then incorporate the resulting goals and constraints in a highly structured, iterative design and development process. This process doesn't end with installation but instead begins anew with the collection of user feedback that will guide further development. Also covered are organizational issues related to the implementation of Usability Engineering, including cost justification, project planning, and organizational structures. * Unites all current UE techniques in a single, authoritative resource, presenting a coherent lifecycle process in which each clearly defined task leads directly the next.* Teaches concrete, immediately usable skills to practitioners in all kinds of product development organizations-from internal departments to commercial developers to consultants.* Contains examples of actual software development projects and the ways in which they have benefited from Usability Engineering.* Deals in specifics, not generalities-provides detailed templates and instructions for every phase of the Usability Engineering lifecycle.* Pays special attention to Web site development and explains how Usability Engineering principles can be applied to the development of any interactive product.
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paper_title: 'Representing the User' in software development-a cultural analysis of usability work in the product development context

paper_content:

It is widely accepted that users should be involved in the development of interactive systems. However, involving users in interactive systems development is challenging, especially in product development. The organizational culture is a key factor affecting the successes and failures of organizational change and development efforts. This paper shows how user involvement is intertwined with the organizational cultures in a case study of five software development organizations. User involvement is indirect in the case organizations, and labeled as usability work. Using cross case analysis, four 'cultures of usability work' are identified. The cultures have distinct cultural characteristics, employ different approaches to usability work, and have different preferences and strategies for the prospective facilitation of usability work. Sensitivity to the cultural context is identified as an important consideration in the facilitation of usability work, and culturally compatible strategies for usability work in different cultural settings are identified. The paper concludes that there might not be one 'best, universally valid, context free way' of introducing and carrying out usability work in software product development organizations.
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paper_title: ‘Listening to the Voices of the Users' in Product Based Software Development

paper_content:

(IT) development, but it is often challenging, especially in the product based software development context. This article critically examines the practice of â€˜listening to the voices of the usersâ€™; how it is accomplished in product based software development. First literature addressing usersâ€™ role in the product development context is reviewed. Afterwards, empirical analysis in three IT companies involved in product business but with different degrees of productization is carried out. In the analysis, the focus is on: 1) Where do the usesâ€™ voices come from? 2) When are the usersâ€™ voices listened to? 3) What happens to the usersâ€™ voices; whether and how do they affect the development? 4) What are the challenges and particularities of each case? The analysis reveals similarities but also clear differences between the cases. Implications both for theory and practice discussed.
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paper_title: Contextual design: defining customer-centered systems

paper_content:

This book introduces a customer-centered approach to business by showing how data gathered from people while they work can drive the definition of a product or process while supporting the needs of teams and their organizations. This is a practical, hands-on guide for anyone trying to design systems that reflect the way customers want to do their work. The authors developed Contextual Design, the method discussed here, through their work with teams struggling to design products and internal systems. In this book, you'll find the underlying principles of the method and how to apply them to different problems, constraints, and organizational situations. ::: ::: Contextual Design enables you to ::: + gather detailed data about how people work and use systems ::: + develop a coherent picture of a whole customer population ::: + generate systems designs from a knowledge of customer work ::: + diagram a set of existing systems, showing their relationships, inconsistencies, redundancies, and omissions ::: ::: Table of Contents ::: ::: Chapter 1 Introduction ::: Chapter 2 Gathering Customer Data ::: Chapter 3 Principles of Contextual Inquiry ::: Chapter 4 Contextual Inquiry in Practice ::: Chapter 5 A Language of Work ::: Chapter 6 Work Models ::: Chapter 7 The Interpretation Session ::: Chapter 8 Consolidation ::: Chapter 9 Creating One View of the Customer ::: Chapter 10 Communicating to the Organization ::: Chapter 11 Work Redesign ::: Chapter 12 Using Data to Drive Design ::: Chapter 13 Design from Data ::: Chapter 14 System Design ::: Chapter 15 The User Environment Design ::: Chapter 16 Project Planning and Strategy ::: Chapter 17 Prototyping as a Design Tool ::: Chapter 18 From Structure to User Interface ::: Chapter 19 Iterating with a Prototype ::: Chapter 20 Putting It into Practice
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paper_title: Integrating HCI Specialists into Open Source Software Development Projects

paper_content:

Typical open source software (OSS) development projects are organized around technically talented developers, whose communication is based on technical aspects and source code. Decision-making power is gained through proven competence and activity in the project, and non-technical end-user opinions are too many times neglected. In addition, also human-computer interaction (HCI) specialists have encountered difficulties in trying to participate in OSS projects, because there seems to be no clear authority and responsibility for them. In this paper, based on HCI and OSS literature, we introduce an extended OSS development project organization model that adds a new level of communication and roles for attending human aspects of software. The proposed model makes the existence of HCI specialists visible in the projects, and promotes interaction between developers and the HCI specialists in the course of a project.
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paper_title: Perceptions and practices of usability in the free/open source software (FoSS) community

paper_content:

This paper presents results from a study examining perceptions and practices of usability in the free/open source software (FOSS) community. 27 individuals associated with 11 different FOSS projects were interviewed to understand how they think about, act on, and are motivated to address usability issues. Our results indicate that FOSS project members possess rather sophisticated notions of software usability, which collectively mirror definitions commonly found in HCI textbooks. Our study also uncovered a wide range of practices that ultimately work to improve software usability. Importantly, these activities are typically based on close, direct interpersonal relationships between developers and their core users, a group of users who closely follow the project and provide high quality, respected feedback. These relationships, along with positive feedback from other users, generate social rewards that serve as the primary motivations for attending to usability issues on a day-to-day basis. These findings suggest a need to reconceptualize HCI methods to better fit this culture of practice and its corresponding value system.
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paper_title: How power users help and hinder open bug reporting

paper_content:

Many power users that contribute to open source projects have no intention of becoming regular contributors; they just want a bug fixed or a feature implemented. How often do these users participate in open source projects and what do they contribute? To investigate these questions, we analyzed the reports of Mozilla contributors who reported problems but were never assigned problems to fix. These analyses revealed that over 11 years and millions of reports, most of these 150,000 users reported non-issues that devolved into technical support, redundant reports with little new information, or narrow, expert feature requests. Reports that did lead to changes were reported by a comparably small group of experienced, frequent reporters, mostly before the release of Firefox 1. These results suggest that the primary value of open bug reporting is in recruiting talented reporters, and not in deriving value from the masses.
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paper_title: Participatory usability: supporting proactive users

paper_content:

After software has been released the opportunities for users to influence development can often be limited. In this paper we review the research on post-deployment usability and make explicit its connections to open source software development. We describe issues involved in the design of end-user reporting tools with reference to the Safari web browser and a digital library prototype.
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paper_title: How Open Source Software Works: Free User-to-User Assistance

paper_content:

Research into free and open source software development projects has so far largely focused on how the major tasks of software development are organized and motivated. But a complete project requires the execution of “mundane but necessary” tasks as well. In this paper, we explore how the mundane but necessary task of field support is organized in the case of Apache web server software, and why some project participants are motivated to provide this service gratis to others. We find that the Apache field support system functions effectively. We also find that, when we partition the help system into its component tasks, 98% of the effort expended by information providers in fact returns direct learning benefits to those providers. This finding considerably reduces the puzzle of why information providers are willing to perform this task “for free.” Implications are discussed. © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
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paper_title: Designers wanted: participation and the user experience in open source software development

paper_content:

We present design concepts and related mockups that support the user experience for projects hosted on CodePlex, an open source project hosting website. Rationale for the design concepts is grounded in the open source literature and a thirteen-week study with the CodePlex team. We propose that fostering ways to build trust, providing opportunities for merit, supporting crossover of work activities, and supporting user experience (UX) best practices in CodePlex will help dismantle the social and technological barriers for UX and encourage UX designer participation. We address UX designer motivation as a challenge for participation and conclude that the mockups presented are a first step in furthering the user experience in open source software development.
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paper_title: Understanding the requirements for developing open source software systems

paper_content:

Presents an initial set of findings from an empirical study of social processes, technical system configurations, organisational contexts and interrelationships that give rise to open software. The focus is directed at understanding the requirements for open software development efforts, and how the development of these requirements differs from those traditional to software engineering and requirements engineering. Four open software development communities are described, examined and compared to help discover what these differences may be. Eight kinds of software informalisms are found to play a critical role in the elicitation, analysis, specification, validation and management of requirements for developing open software systems. Subsequently, understanding the roles these software informalisms take in a new formulation of the requirements development process for open source software is the focus of the study. This focus enables the consideration of a reformulation of the requirements engineering process and its associated artefacts, or (in)formalisms, to better account for the requirements for developing open source software systems.
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paper_title: Technological mediation for design collaboration

paper_content:

As the new century opens, work processes have been reengineered, shifting from Tayloristic models of sequential specialization toward work processes that are concurrent and multidisciplinary. This shift in work processes put a premium on design collaborations in which members of project teams go beyond the simple coordination of still individualistic work to engage in joint activity aimed at the co-construction of "collective work products. " In this paper, we outline five basic characteristics emerging from a small but important body of work describing design collaboration. We then go on to suggest why most common collaborative technologies provide poor support for these characteristics, although recent trends are moving in promising directions. We conclude by outlining four criteria which technological mediation for design collaboration must meet in order to effectively support this new kind of work practice. These criteria can assist practitioners in evaluating the ever changing and ever increasing number of collaborative technologies.
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paper_title: User Involvement in the Systems Design Process-A Practical Guide for Users

paper_content:

Increasingly users ® nd themselvesinvolved' in IT design projects. This occurs because the organizational culture of the parent organization purports to promote participation, or because structured design methods are being used which require users to play a part. In either case users who ® nd themselves required to participate in IT projects are frequently unclear about what this requires. In most organizations surprisingly little brie® ng on the users' role in design projects is provided. Users are therefore confused about their brief and concerned about their lack of expertise in computing. Although research reports on participatory design (PD) projects abound, little coherent guidance for the key stakeholders representing users' interests is available. The contents of this paper go some way towards ® lling the gap. Clear differentiation is made in the paper between the roles of the different players involved. Detailed guidance is provided for meeting the varied requirements of the different roles. For example, the roles oftop' management andmiddle' management in supporting user involvement are explored, their special responsibilities speci® ed and required actions listed. The need for an infrastructure to support user involvement and how to create one is discussed. Guidance is provided on, for example, the representation process and the factors to consider in selecting user representatives. The role of user representatives is particularly problematical and therefore receives particularly close attention. Finally guidance is given regarding the common pitfalls in Quality Assurance procedures and especially how to avoid the procedures becoming a meaninglessrubber-stamping' exercise. The guidance presented is grounded in the extensive experience of the author in participative design processes in a wide variety of contexts including the footwear industry, a major UK government department and a telecommunications and broadcasting company.
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paper_title: 'Representing the User' in software development-a cultural analysis of usability work in the product development context

paper_content:

It is widely accepted that users should be involved in the development of interactive systems. However, involving users in interactive systems development is challenging, especially in product development. The organizational culture is a key factor affecting the successes and failures of organizational change and development efforts. This paper shows how user involvement is intertwined with the organizational cultures in a case study of five software development organizations. User involvement is indirect in the case organizations, and labeled as usability work. Using cross case analysis, four 'cultures of usability work' are identified. The cultures have distinct cultural characteristics, employ different approaches to usability work, and have different preferences and strategies for the prospective facilitation of usability work. Sensitivity to the cultural context is identified as an important consideration in the facilitation of usability work, and culturally compatible strategies for usability work in different cultural settings are identified. The paper concludes that there might not be one 'best, universally valid, context free way' of introducing and carrying out usability work in software product development organizations.
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paper_title: Toward an understanding of the motivation of open source software developers

paper_content:

An Open Source Software (OSS) project is unlikely to be successful unless there is an accompanied community that provides the platform for developers and users to collaborate. Members of such communities are volunteers whose motivation to participate and contribute is of essential importance to the success of OSS projects. In this paper, we aim to create an understanding of what motivates people to participate in OSS communities. We theorize that learning is one of the motivational forces. Our theory is grounded in the learning theory of Legitimate Peripheral Participation, and is supported by analyzing the social structure of OSS communities and the co-evolution between OSS systems and communities. We also discuss practical implications of our theory for creating and maintaining sustainable OSS communities as well as for software engineering research and education.
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paper_title: An analysis of involvement of HCI experts in distributed software development: practical issues

paper_content:

Traditionally, free and open source software (F/OSS) developers have focused more on the features of a specific application, most of the time ignoring the necessity of user-centric design. This has mainly stemmed from the fact that developers have little interaction with HCI studies, knowledge bases and reports. Moreover, the lack of user interface designers has resulted in a lack of awareness of this area. As a consequence, the user centric design phenomenon within F/OSS applications has been neglected. In this paper, we have mentioned various problems that would slow down a F/OSS project development towards a user-engineered software, and investigated the ways that HCI experts and developers interact with each other and researched bug reporting systems by means of eligibility to issue usability bugs. For the conclusion part, we have explored possible ways to achieve a user-centric design in a project with asynchronous interaction among geographically distributed developers.
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paper_title: Coordinating open-source software development

paper_content:

Open-source software (OSS) projects are arguably the quintessential example of distributed software development, with their openness to a large pool of world-wide contributors and their loose organizational structure. To cope with the demands which this openness and fluidity place on the development process, open-source projects have evolved their own methods and organization. This paper looks at the ways some of the major and most successful OSS projects deal with the issue of coordination among their many contributors. Although each of the projects examined in this paper developed some unique practices, there are also significant commonalities. The paper then goes on to indicate some of the problems caused by the existing practices and puts forward some possible approaches to OSS coordination that could make OSS development more efficient.
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paper_title: Is the open-source community setting a bad example?

paper_content:

My, how the world has changed. IBM is now backing Apache, Netscape has put an extraordinary amount of useful software out into the open, and vendors such as Metrowerks, Sybase and Oracle have released versions of their tools to run on a give-away operating system. It seems that the open-source movement-Linux, Perl, Apache, and their many cousins-has finally hit the big time. But my, how the world has stayed the same. EGGS (a derivative of the Free Software Foundation's GNU C++) is one of the few compilers around that has kept pace with the ANSI standard, but CVS, the open-source version control system, is 1O years behind equivalent commercial offerings. Linux is now more robust than some commercial varieties of Unix, but it's impossible to compare the reliability of open-source project management tools to that of Microsoft Project because the former don't exist.
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<format>
Title: A Review of Tool Support for User-Related Communication in FLOSS Development

Section 1: Introduction
Description 1: Introduce the concept of FLOSS, the structure of FLOSS projects, the challenges in user-developer communication, and the purpose of the paper.

Section 2: Existing Communication Means in FLOSS Projects
Description 2: Describe the common characteristics and existing communication methods in FLOSS projects, including the tools used and their benefits and challenges.

Section 3: User-Developer Communication Means in FLOSS Projects
Description 3: Discuss the specific means of user-developer communication in FLOSS projects, the challenges faced by non-technical users, and the role of HCI specialists.

Section 4: HCI Research Guidelines
Description 4: Present guidelines from HCI research on user-developer communication, highlighting the phases of development and the importance of involving users and HCI experts.

Section 5: Recommended Communication Means for FLOSS Projects
Description 5: Connect FLOSS development practices with HCI literature, present recommendations for enhancing communication means, and suggest tools and practices to support user-developer communication.

Section 6: Conclusions
Description 6: Summarize the findings, emphasize the need for better tool support and new practices for user-developer communication, and outline paths for future work.

</format>
The outline: