A master thesis from Aalborg University
'Usability evaluation in open source development'
Term
4. term (INF10 - Master Thesis)
Education
Publication year
2006
Submitted on
2012-02-14
Abstract
'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.'
Documents
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