'Usability evaluation in open source development'
Student thesis: Master thesis (including HD thesis)
- Morten Sieker Andreasen
- Henrik Villemann Nielsen
- Simon Ormholt Schrøder
4. term (INF10 - Master Thesis), Informatics, Master (Master Programme)
'Open Source Software has become an increasingly
popular alternative to commercial
software but it has been criticized for
it’s lack of usability. This master thesis
shows how usability work in Open Source
Software development can be improved using
remote usability evaluation.
Initially a questionnaire survey and interviews
with open source developers and usability
professionals were performed in order
to investigate the opinions towards usability
and the current practice of usability
evaluation. The importance of usability
was regarded as high among open source
developers but in practice the main usability
effort was based on common sense.
The main obstacles for improved usability
work were found in the open source development
model and in the distributed organizational
structure.
Therefore a comparative study of three
remote usability evaluation methods was
performed against a laboratory evaluation.
This comparison showed that the results
of a remote synchronous evaluation were
comparable to those of a laboratory evaluation.
An asynchronous remote evaluation
identified significantly fewer problems than
a laboratory evaluation but the problems
identified were critical.
We consider both methods alternatives or
supplements for usability evaluation in the
open source community.'
Language | English |
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Publication date | Jun 2006 |