Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Systems
Group Members
Akhil Raj
Anika Varkey
Mathew Sam
Contents
S.
No.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Topic
Open Source Software
Usability
OSS Development
Process
Improving OSS
Usability
Approaches
Future Work
Conclusion
Slide
Number
3
4
7
9
10
11
12
Usability
"Usability" refers to how easily users can learn and
start using software, or any similar "information
product".
Usability of Open Source Software.
Open source software has gained a reputation for
reliability, efficiency, functionality and not usability.
Usability is typically described in terms of five
characteristics: ease of learning, efficiency of use,
memorability, error frequency and severity, and
subjective satisfaction.
Types of Users.
Usability (Contd)
This
paper
examines
software
development
usability
of
open
source
software
and
projects
emphasize
incremental development.
on
continual
usability
issues
and
interface
psychology.
It is a direct result of the OSS
development process.
It has a negative impact on
usability.
OSS Development
Process
The five fundamental problems with the current
Open Source software development process are as
follows.
1. User interface design
2. Documentation
3. Featurecentric development
4. Programming for the self
5. Religious blindness
OSS Development
Process
Developers are not typical end-users.
Lack of involvement of usability experts.
The
incentives
are
better
for
improvement
of
of
software
have
become
more
heterogeneous.
Software producers have to adopt user centred
methods
by
employing
human
computer
gap
between
aim
at
bridging
the
Approaches
Commercial Approaches
Technological Approaches
Academic Involvement
Involving the end users
Involving the experts.
Education and evangelism
10
Future Work
Open source community is increasing its
awareness of usability issues. They have
identified the barriers to usability and how they
can be addressed.
Companies have come to understand the
importance of open source and the key role it
plays in developing innovative software today.
Open source has long since proved its legitimacy,
11
and the use of open source has changed the way
that companies compete.
Conclusion
By engaging typical users into the development
process OSS projects can create a networked
development community that can do for usability
what it has already done for functionality and
reliability. There are many techniques from HCI that
can be easily and cheaply adopted by open source
developers.
12