Lean Left

« Previous | Next »

Open Source and Usability
Posted by Kevin

The MIT Technology Review has a brief piece by a Portuguese Professor sorta taking Open source usability to task:

Collaboration can cut both ways, however. Because new functions may be proposed and appended by almost anyone at any time, open-source software can become every bit as feature­-rich as its commercial cousins, and thus equally vulnerable to the creeping excess that bedevils many mainstream products. As the code slowly grows in complexity as well as capability, usability suffers, not only because new functions add to the user interface but because such additions are ad hoc and implemented case by case.

Open source may be superior in producing robust, reliable code. It can hold its own in providing functionality. But its weakness remains usability, which increasingly is the battle­ground for competing programs.

He doesn’t provide any support for his contention that usability suffers in open source projects, but he doesn’t really need to. Anyone involved in software - -the audience for this article — doesn’t need convincing. Open Source projects lag far behind their closed source competitors when it comes to the user experience for non techs. Linux desktops for example, have gotten better but there is not one that is better — or, really, even comparable — to the ease of us in Windows or Macs. Prof. Constantine wonders if they ever will. I don’t think so, at least not anytime soon.

the first problem open source projects have is one of selection bias. Good programmers do not necessarily make good user interface designers, and good user interface designers do not seem to be involved in large numbers in open source projects. Perhaps because there are still some quarters in programming that consider designers to be a lessor breed. I think, though, that the larger reason is the kinds of projects that generally get created through open source methodology.

Most people who work on open source projects have two things: time and an itch to scratch. Since we are talking about programmers, for the most part, the itches are usually related to things that make programmers lives easier. Not always — I have done work for projects that weren’t related to anything I did professionally just because I liked the idea of helping the target audience out — but often. Desktops and user experience in general aren’t the kinds of itches that really get under programmer’s skins. Most programmers — through necessity — learn their way around their environments very quickly. So unless they are dedicated to Linux Everywhere!, most programmers gravitate to other “itches” more important to their own experiences. Mac OsX, the best desktop interface I have ever used, is built atop an open source operating system. It could have been done by open source programmers. That is wasn’t tells us something about the priorities of said programmers.

More importantly, programmers don’t need their interfaces to be as simplified as the general population does. Since programmers by definition understand software better than most people, the level of usability that programmers find acceptable is a lot lower than that most end users. What seems “simple” to an expert is very often seen as complex and confusing by the general population. Since there are fewer designers in the open source community, and since most of the people who use the end product are, if not technological professionals, much more at ease with computer technology than the general population, the developer’s version of “simple” is what gets released. I don’t see that changing anytime soon, because I don’t see the incentives for participating in open source projects changing anytime soon.

January 24th, 2007 Technology | 3 comments