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Usability and Open Source Software
Martin Soto writes "This article by two user interaction researchers, discusses many of the usability problems in current open source projects. The nice part is that, unlike many /. readers, it doesn't stop there, but goes into suggesting novel (at least for the OSS community) approaches to cope with those problems in an open source compatible way. Worth a read to those that, like me, still think that OSS should find its way to every desktop computer."
In the open source world, programming ability is king. If you're a hot coder, you're desired and you can be seen as a philanthropist by developing free software.
However, when it comes to interface design, usability, documentation, and any of the 101 other skills related to developing applications, there just isn't the same level of acceptance.
How many open source apps have good documentation, easy to use interfaces, and professional Web sites? One or two.
There's some darn fine software out there (Apache comes to mind) but where is the demand for good documentation, design, art, QA people in the open source world?
I think that those few writers, artists, and interface people working on open source projects are extremely underrated and aren't getting the credit they deserve.. while someone who comes up with a clever hack in C++ gets their name in lights.
mogorific carpentry experiments
The combination of OSS underpinnings with the Aqua interface, designed as a commercial project, shows the functional results of one of their solutions. It isn't necessarily the only way, but it gives hope that the other approaches can be successfully navigated.
bullshit. this is *exactly* the kind of elitist attitude that is directly responsible for OSS *not* being more widely accepted.
sure, you say it in a much more palatable way ("... it just has a higher learning curve to the uninitiated user."), but the meaning behind the words is always the same.
people like you fear a "dumbing down" of OSS, and yet you are the same individuals who are first to champion Joe Average abandoning a platform he is comfortable with and "just works" (from *his* perspective, which, as much as you might want to disagree, is all that matters) in favor of one which is completely foreign and threatens the prospect of having to relearn even the simplest of tasks.
wake up. useability is much, much more than "something you add on the backend of a product to market it." it is ultimately what decides, after the marketing hype and initial bandwagon inertia have settled, the success or failure of anything from the simplest script to the most complex architecture.
and, oddly enough, it's actually YOU who really thinks that "useability is a nice GUI where you can get a mouse trail going."
!!!!! useability != gui !!!!!
a gui must take useability concerns into account just as much (in many cases moreso) than a command-line interface.
Usability is not tacked on at the end. In fact, if you've tried to tack some usability on to the end of your way-cool-code, then your little app is almost certainly not that usable. That's a big problem with OSS, as far as I can tell. You've got to think about *how* people are going to use it and *why* they would use it before you write the code that is the *what* of the equation. I'm an Information Architect, the how and why is what I insist on before my app developer writes the code that does it all. We get much better results than trying to proceed in the other direction.
Somebody in an earlier post said that OSS app coders are just interested in "utilitarian" stuff and that's why they are like they are (the apps, that is). Uh Uh. I don't think so. "Utilitarian" means that someone has to *utilize* the thing. If there's no usability, then utility is a lot harder to acheive.
I don't think Neilsen is god. I think his usability equations don't give enough credit for software and sites that are compelling, as well as functional but, that said, the usability gurus have a lot to teach OSS creators. IMHO.
dcobbler
Due to the Microsoft monopoly, most users are trained to understand how to interface with Microsoft products. Thus, people define usability based on how close it is to Microsoft's interface.
Case in point, I was in a library recently. The library has a bunch of iMacs running OS X. A young woman and her friend approached one of the computers and began fumbling about with it. After failing to find what she wanted after 5 minutes, she told her friend in disgust, "I hate Macs," and left.
To me, it appears that OS X has a fairly straightforward, easy to use interface. To this young woman, however, it is apparent that she finds Microsoft Windows more usable than Mac OS X, because her home PC is likely a Windows machine, and she doesn't want to put any effort into learning anything new.
Sure, OSS usability is a bit rough around the edges in many categories. However, the only way it will be "usable" in the eyes of many users is if it copies the interface of Microsoft's products.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
Precisely. Another part of the problem is that OSS developers, typically being geographically-disperse and having little access to funding, have no contact with their end users during the design and development phase and cannot do usability testing.
(There's also a "willingness" aspect -- a developer is often not the right person to be doing usability testing with naive users. It's a touchy-feely kind of task, which most developers, OSS or not, wouldn't enjoy, let alone be able to do it well. In commercial environments, that's what the human-factors folks are for.)
Which is how we got to the present situation on OSS and usability testing:
"When writing Soviet GPL code, user interface tests you!"
They are investigating whether poor usability
in most open source software is connected to
open source licensing and open source development methodology.
That is, does open source = poor usability.
Two alternative explanations for poor usability
should be explored (and need to be disproven
before blaming "open source") IMO:
- by historical accident, most open source
developers are unix programmers who don't
know a UI from a hole in the ground.
i.e. the argument is that more UI-attuned
open source communities can do just fine
with the open source licensing/methodology.
- open source GUI software is simply quite
immature. We're just maturing on the server
side; the UI is still comparable to Linux 2.0 or
earlier, not Linux 2.6.
Lots of our GUI software is very newly-written.
And a lot less people are working on it than
are working on the kernel and Apache and
so on.
This will change as the userbase grows.
I also don't take it as a given that commercial
software is hugely better; some important
commercial packages (such as Quicken) have
pretty awful interfaces. Though some
are very nice, for sure.
I waste my time doing this about once a year. I Before Win95 I used Linux almost as much as I used DOS. But, as my time became more valuable a GUI was in need. Win95 gave it to me, X has never given it to me. I'll keep trying so that I'm "open minded", but when a company can take a couple years and get unix on the deskop right (OS X) practically the first time (admittidly, it was released a few months too early), I become uninterested in the year after year failures of the OSS alternatives.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
This comment is a classic troll. You've made a blatant overstatement. Let's see some evidence, even anecdotal. Has anybody here really tried to contribute documentation or art to a project, but were dissed or not given credit?
I think that those few writers, artists, and interface people working on open source projects are extremely underrated and aren't getting the credit they deserve..
I think you overstate this. All documentation writers and artists receive credit on the OSS projects I'm involved with.
Yes, and for its intended audience, that is highly usable: it's concise, it's easy to automate, it can be typed quickly, it works through ssh, and you can talk people through it over the phone.
The "usability" alternative is something like this:
For end-users who don't know what they are doing, I suppose clicking around provides at least some entertainment, even if it's a waste of time. For expert users--people who have to use this stuff every day--however, even a cryptic command line beats the UI any day.
What an odd and disturbing trend. People publicly admitting that they are unable to perform tasks that tens of thousands of other people have performed with little or no trouble.
Okay, I call bullshit. Tens of thousands of other people have performed the task, but they did not do it with "little or no trouble" unless they already had significant knowledge of Debian. Nobody has little or no trouble the first time the install Debian. I've been using Linux since 0.99pl14 and I've written a miniscule portion of the code in the kernel, and I _hate_ installing Debian, but do so because after I install it I feel that I have installed a system which contains only the things I want (i.e. thinnest possible system).
Any corporate entity I talk to I steer way clear of Debian because their tech people would use it to deride linux as completely unusable. RedHat and Mandrake are much easier. In the time it took me to get 1 good Debian install, I could have installed Mandrake 4 times.
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
Nobody will see this because I posted so late, but I gotta say it anyway.
The reason OSS hasn't taken hold is because of usability, hands down. Mozilla, OpenOffice, CDex, gAIM, all are good examples of OSS that is quality, easy, etc. They install graphically and simply, have intuitive interfaces, and work like professional commercial software.
Most other OSS is designed by one person. That person has an idea for a program and they design it to suit their personal needs. This software often does not suit the needs of 10000000 users the way something like Office does. It usually ends up being CLI or a piss poor GUI. It's difficult to install and only compiles correctly on one specific version of one specific distro of linux with one specific kernel. The rpms don't work. And there is often already a commercial product for windows that does the same thing, better, easier, and is free, can be pirated, downloaded, or otherwise obtained.
OSS doesn't fail because it is open source or because of the free as in speech mentality behind it. It fails because most often, it sucks. Look at Winzip. Nobody pays for winzip. They crack it or deal with the I agree box. But zillions of people use winzip, myself included. They use it because it is a high quality piece of software, that is free as in beer (not in the world of law, but in the real world), is easy to use, easy to install, and it works.
If winzip happened to be open source it would do just as well. When more OSS reaches the quality of professional software in the same way that Mozilla/OpenOffice/gAIM/CDex have then more people will use it.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
All I can say to this is that I've had a VERY different experience with Linux installers.
My very first Linux install was with a purchased copy of RedHat 6.0. Even then I was impressed at how well it worked. Literally 30 minutes from CD in the drive to a working desktop getting on the net.
Later, I ran a Suse 8.0 install. This one had some problems with the drive which required a low level format from an OEM utility. After that, I was again extremely impressed with both the presentation and functionality of the installer.
I can honestly say the same for Mandrake as well.
I have other issues with all of these that keep me using FreeBSD, which doesn't have the same super-slick installer, but provides for many other benefits. Even still, I managed to get it installed and working properly on the first try without anywhere near the kinds of problems you had.
I suppose the appropriate response here would be to illustrate the many frustrating hours fighting various Windows installs that didn't play nice due to a variety of reasons. How many folks here intuitively knew about the F6 trick to get SCSI loaded properly for NT? How about changing out a motherboard from underneath an already installed system. Oh yeah, Windows just loves that!
Why just pick on Windows though? I've run into all kinds of interesting glitchies with Mac OS 9 and X in the past. Various formating gotchas, or extension conflict finding sucking away the hours.
Go have yourself a visit on any newsgroup or mailing list for OS tech support. All of them have horror stories or odd gotchas that impact every darn thing out there. Coming up with one for Linux is hardly that noteworthy, escpecially when the vast majority of folks are able to get their installs to work properly.
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.