Untold Stories: Unveiling the Scarce Contributions of UX Professionals to Usability Issue Discussions of Open Source Software Projects

TL;DR

This study analyzes how UX professionals contribute to open source software issue discussions, revealing their distinct approaches and highlighting the need to increase their involvement to enhance usability and user satisfaction.

Contribution

It uncovers the specific behaviors and approaches of UX professionals in OSS discussions, offering insights to foster greater UX involvement in open source projects.

Findings

UX professionals address a wider range of usability issues.

They provide well-supported, factual contributions.

They actively engage with follow-up comments.

Abstract

Previous work established that open source software (OSS) projects can benefit from the involvement of UX professionals, who offer user-centric perspectives and contributions to improve software usability. However, their participation in OSS issue discussions (places where design and implementation decisions are often made) is relatively scarce since those platforms are created with a developer-centric mindset. Analyzing a dataset sampled from five OSS projects, this study identifies UX professionals' distinct approaches to raising and following up on usability issues. Compared to other contributors, UX professionals addressed a broader range of usability issues, well-supported their stances, and were more factual than emotional. They also actively engage in discussions to provide additional insights and clarifications in comments following up on the issues they posted. Results from this study provide useful insights for increasing UX professionals' involvement in OSS communities to improve usability and end-user satisfaction.