{"52369":{"#nid":"52369","#data":{"type":"event","title":"GVU BROWN BAG: Mike Terry,  University of Waterloo","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EUsability in the Free\/Open Source Software Community\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EABSTRACT:\u00a0\u00a0In the past 10 years, free\/open source software\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n(FOSS) has become an integral part of the computing landscape. But in\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nthe absence of economic incentives, why should open source developers\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nbe concerned with the usability of the software they produce?\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EIn this talk, I describe results from an interview study of 27\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nindividuals, from 11 different projects, that examined how FOSS\u003Cbr \/\u003E\ndevelopers think about, act on, and are motivated by usability issues. \u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EOur results reveal that the primary motivator for attending to\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nusability needs is high quality, positive feedback from respected\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nend-users during development, rather than the desire to increase the\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nsoftware\u2019s user base, as is commonly perceived. Our results also\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nindicate that, collectively, the open source community has a rather\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nsophisticated understanding of usability and usability issues, even if\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nthe community is still developing methods to address usability needs in\u003Cbr \/\u003E\ntheir development processes. Collectively, our findings suggest a need\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nto reconceptualize and transform HCI methods to operate within an\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nenvironment for which economic incentives are not a motivator for\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nmaking software usable.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EBIO:\u00a0Michael Terry, a GVU alum, is an assistant professor in the\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nDavid R. Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nWaterloo, where he co-directs the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Lab\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n(hci.uwaterloo.ca). His research focuses on developing, deploying, and\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nevaluating new tools to support usability needs in free\/open source\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nsoftware development. As part of this research, his group created\u003Cbr \/\u003E\ningimp (\u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www.ingimp.org\/\u0022\u003Ehttp:\/\/www.ingimp.org\u003C\/a\u003E), an\u003Cbr \/\u003E\ninstrumented version of GIMP that provides the first rich, large-scale\u003Cbr \/\u003E\ncharacterization of how an open source application is used \u0022in the\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nwild\u0022 on a day-to-day basis. All data from the project are publicly\u003Cbr \/\u003E\navailable for analysis and use in research.\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":"","field_summary_sentence":"","uid":"27154","created_gmt":"2010-02-11 15:51:34","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 01:49:39","author":"Louise Russo","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","field_event_time":{"event_time_start":"2010-01-21T11:00:00-05:00","event_time_end":"2010-01-21T12:00:00-05:00","event_time_end_last":"2010-01-21T12:00:00-05:00","gmt_time_start":"2010-01-21 16:00:00","gmt_time_end":"2010-01-21 17:00:00","gmt_time_end_last":"2010-01-21 17:00:00","rrule":null,"timezone":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"groups":[{"id":"47223","name":"College of Computing"}],"categories":[],"keywords":[],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[],"email":[],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}