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Open Source and Human Computer Interaction Philosophies in Open Source Projects: Incompatible or Co-Existent?

Published: 01 October 2013 Publication History

Abstract

The importance of introducing usability activities into open source software (OSS) development has been acknowledged in the research literature; however, there is a lack of research examining the compatibility and actual co-existence of the philosophies of OSS and Human Computer Interaction (HCI), guiding usability research and practice, in OSS projects. This paper fills in this gap through an empirical examination of two OSS projects into which usability activities were introduced. The results show that in these cases the usability specialists embraced aspects of both philosophies; hence, these philosophies coexisted. However, the usability specialists either 'became them' or 'were close while kept the distance'. In both cases the usability specialists aligned their work with the OSS philosophy. However, through this alignment, in the other case they become very immersed in the OSS project, encountering a risk of becoming misaligned with the core HCI philosophy. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

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  • (2022)Designing for Knowledge Construction to Facilitate the Uptake of Open Science: Laying out the Design SpaceProceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3491102.3517450(1-16)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2022
  • (2022)Practical applicability of user experience capability/maturity models in the development processes of free and open-source software: a systematic literature reviewBehaviour & Information Technology10.1080/0144929X.2022.203234842:5(596-623)Online publication date: 8-Feb-2022
  • (2019)Mapping and Analysis of Open Source Software (OSS) Usability for Sustainable OSS ProductIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2019.29143687(65913-65933)Online publication date: 2019
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    AcademicMindTrek '13: Proceedings of International Conference on Making Sense of Converging Media
    October 2013
    360 pages
    ISBN:9781450319928
    DOI:10.1145/2523429
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Published: 01 October 2013

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    1. Human Computer Interaction
    2. Open source software
    3. Usability

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    View all
    • (2022)Designing for Knowledge Construction to Facilitate the Uptake of Open Science: Laying out the Design SpaceProceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3491102.3517450(1-16)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2022
    • (2022)Practical applicability of user experience capability/maturity models in the development processes of free and open-source software: a systematic literature reviewBehaviour & Information Technology10.1080/0144929X.2022.203234842:5(596-623)Online publication date: 8-Feb-2022
    • (2019)Mapping and Analysis of Open Source Software (OSS) Usability for Sustainable OSS ProductIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2019.29143687(65913-65933)Online publication date: 2019
    • (2015)Examining Usability Work and Culture in OSSTraffic Monitoring and Analysis10.1007/978-3-319-17837-0_6(58-67)Online publication date: 17-Apr-2015

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