How Do Open Source Software Contributors Perceive and Address Usability? Valued Factors, Practices, and Challenges

TL;DR

This study surveys OSS contributors to understand their perceptions, practices, and challenges related to usability, revealing a predominance of system-centric approaches and highlighting the need for more user-centric practices.

Contribution

It provides empirical insights into current OSS usability practices, emphasizing the gap between user needs and contributor approaches, and suggests directions for fostering user-centric development.

Findings

Many contributors recognize usability importance

Most rely on issue tracking for feedback

Challenges in understanding diverse user needs

Abstract

Usability is an increasing concern in open source software (OSS). Given the recent changes in the OSS landscape, it is imperative to examine the OSS contributors' current valued factors, practices, and challenges concerning usability. We accumulated this knowledge through a survey with a wide range of contributors to OSS applications. Through analyzing 84 survey responses, we found that many participants recognized the importance of usability. While most relied on issue tracking systems to collect user feedback, a few participants also adopted typical user-centered design methods. However, most participants demonstrated a system-centric rather than a user-centric view. Understanding the diverse needs and consolidating various feedback of end-users posed unique challenges for the OSS contributors when addressing usability in the most recent development context. Our work provided important insights for OSS practitioners and tool designers in exploring ways for promoting a user-centric mindset and improving usability practice in the current OSS communities.