Mike Kuniavsky makes some good points in his article, but there is nothing unique about an open source approach to UI development that is an Achilles Heel. Proven processes like formal usability testing will improve the UI in an open source project just as it does in proprietary projects. Creating a great UI is not easy, and as others have noted there are many examples of lousy UIs in proprietary applications. Improving a UI is mainly just a question of finding the right resources. But, like documentation, usability testing is a less glamorous and often overlooked area of ANY software development effort. Formal usability testing and better UIs will become more common in OSS as the movement continues to mature and include more end user applications. After all, a "geekey" UI is perfectly appropriate when the UI is intended for use by geeks.
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Mike Kuniavsky makes some good points in his article, but there is nothing unique about an open source approach to UI development that is an Achilles Heel. Proven processes like formal usability testing will improve the UI in an open source project just as it does in proprietary projects. Creating a great UI is not easy, and as others have noted there are many examples of lousy UIs in proprietary applications. Improving a UI is mainly just a question of finding the right resources. But, like documentation, usability testing is a less glamorous and often overlooked area of ANY software development effort. Formal usability testing and better UIs will become more common in OSS as the movement continues to mature and include more end user applications. After all, a "geekey" UI is perfectly appropriate when the UI is intended for use by geeks.