Improvement of Open Source Software Usability: An Empirical Evaluation from Developers' Perspective

Abstract

User satisfaction has always been important for software success whether it is Open Source Software (OSS) or closed proprietary software. Even though we do not presume that OSS always has poor usability, as there are examples of good usable open source software, it would still be agreed that OSS usability has room for further improvement. This paper presents an empirical investigation to study the impact of some key factors on OSS usability from developers' points of view. This is one of the series of four studies that we are conducting regarding improvement of OSS usability from OSS developers, users, contributors, and industry perspectives. The research model of this empirical investigation studies and establishes the relationship between the key usability factors from developers' perspective and OSS usability. A data set of 106 OSS developers from 18 open source projects of varied size has been used to study the research model. The results of this study provide empirical evidence that the studied key factors play a significant role in improving OSS usability.

Need for a Soft Dimension

“…In today's knowledge economy continuous/lifelong learning is assuming greater significance. Every educational institute needs to appreciate that and make provision for developing those skills, for instance to nurture the ability to understand available code written in modern languages in open source software libraries [8].…”

Usability bugs in open-source software and online forums

“…In their empirical study for measuring the success of OSS projects, Lee et al [9] also recognize the influence of software quality and user satisfaction over OSS use. Raza et al [10] maintain that OSS developers should consider multiple key usability factors to improve usability of their projects. 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 Software usability is a subjective concept, and thus it cannot be directly measured.…”

Design of Open Source Framework for Traffic and Travel Simulation

“…Some of the reasons to contribute to it are the availability of tailor-made functions, the ability to use and modify the existing methods, and a proper architecture. The software should be usable, in the sense that it can be understood, learned, and used, and it should be attractive to the user (22). Only the pieces of code that are relevant for research can then be studied, evaluated, adjusted, and, hopefully, used in innovations.…”

“…The incremental design approach that introduces advancing levels in a gradual and progressive manner is a way to make new users more comfortable. This approach can be realized by providing different entry levels (22). In the case of OpenTraffic, the basic level starts with the adjustment of parameters and equations (for instance, in text boxes); the next stage moves toward the adjustment of modules; and the final stage includes the replacement or addition of complete new modules.…”