Ubuntu Wiki

Week of June 15, 2009

Goals for this week (Monica):

1. Literature review around software installation process, potential names, etc.
   • Looked at software choice/behavior where do they find software? how do they get it? Searching on software discovery, installation, installability, information seeking, purchase software, software diffusion, distribution, pre-packaged software, software delivery method, open source software usability
   • Not a ton out there, maybe more in white papers? Most is in management of info sys literature and is from a management perspective (e.g. Szajna, B. "Software Evaluation and Choice: Predictive Validation of the Technology Accep- tance Instrument," MIS Quarterly (18:3), September 1994, pp. 319-324.)
   • Some more formal OSS Usability studies:

     • Smith, S. Engen, D., Mankoski, A., Frishberg, N., Nils Pedersen, N. & Benson, C. (2001). GNOME Usability Study Report. Sun GNOME Human Computer Interaction (HCI), Sun Microsystems, Inc.

     • Athena, 2001. "Usability Testing of Athena User Interface," MIT Information Systems, at http://web.mit.edu/is/usability/aui/

     • David M. Nichols, Kirsten Thomson, and Stuart A. Yeates, 2001. "Usability and Open Source Software Development," In: E. Kemp, C. Phillips, Kinshuck, and J. Haynes (editors). Proceedings of the Symposium on Computer Human Interaction. Palmerston North, New Zealand: SIGCHI New Zealand. pp. 49-54.

     • Susanne Eklund, Michal Feldman, Mary Trombley, and Rashmi Sinha, 2002. "Improving the Usability of Open Source Software: Usability Testing of StarOffice Calc," Presented at the Open Source Meets Usability Workshop, Conference on Human Factors in Computer Systems (CHI 2002), Minneapolis, MN, at http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/~sinha/opensource.html

     • Bruce Sterling, 2002. "A Contrarian Position on Open Source." Presented at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, Sheraton San Diego Hotel and Marina, July 22-26, 2002. San Diego, CA, at http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2002/08/05/sterling.html

     • Nancy Frishberg, Anna Marie Dirks, Calum Benson, Seth Nickell, and Suzanna Smith, 2002. "Getting to Know You: Open Source Development Meets Usability," Extended Abstracts of the Conference on Human Factors in Computer Systems (CHI 2002). New York: ACM Press. pp. 932-933.

   • M. Twidale & D.M Nichols, publish extensively about F/OSS usability:

     • Nice collection of links http://people.lis.illinois.edu/~twidale/research/ossui/

     • http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~daven/docs/oss-wp.html

     • http://people.lis.illinois.edu/~twidale/pubs.html

     • People who cite them https://exchangeweb.drexel.edu/owa/redir.aspx?C=6a5310c2dbcc4aee865131b5e8c55d35&URL=http%3a%2f%2fscholar.google.com%2fscholar%3fnum%3d20%26hl%3den%26lr%3d%26newwindow%3d1%26client%3dfirefox-a%26cites%3d18443168390341416686

   • J Seydel, OpenOffice. org: When Will It Be Ready for Prime Time? http://www.swdsi.org/swdsi2009/Papers/9K13.pdf

   • Methodology ideas

     • apply exploratory learning, constructivist education theory: Zhao, L. and Deek, F. P. 2006. Exploratory inspection: a learning model for improving open source software usability. In CHI '06 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Montréal, Québec, Canada, April 22 - 27, 2006). CHI '06. ACM, New York, NY, 1589-1594. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1125451.1125741

   • Overall, what do we learn from the literature?
     • General consensus that usability is a blocking factor to increasing use
     • OSS development process does not match that of traditional software development (obviously), can existing usability methods still find relevance? When and where? What can be imported from nearby fields?
     • Struggling around methodology - how do you actually involve novice end users?
       • Lot of talk about using existing tools, such as bug reporting tools. How to make them more visual and better for conveying interface ideas/issues.
       • Building in automatic bug reporting
       • Patterns, guidelines applied by developers
2. Review of wireframes

   • Nielsen Heuristics (full descriptions -> http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/heuristic_list.html )

     • Visibility of system status
     • Match between system and the real world
     • User control and freedom
     • Consistency and standards
     • Error prevention
     • Recognition rather than recall
     • Flexibility and efficiency of use
     • Aesthetic and minimalist design
     • Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors
     • Help and documentation
   • Notes:
     • what are our options for categorical display - i.e. does it need to be traditionally hierarchical?
     • can we show # of software in each category (and total)?
     • do we know how much screen real estate typically allotted? designing for netbooks to desktops?
     • abstract these even more for initial testing, relatively high fidelity
     • categories are important but people will probably lean heavily on the search
     • does there still need to be a link/connection to synaptic? when would that be exposed?
     • software vs. app, should be consistent
     • like how left column handles "state" instead of exploration taxonomy - like miro, hulu desktop might be interesting too

Next week:

1. Naming!