Involving users in the wild—Participatory product development in and with online communities

In its traditional stance, participatory design (PD) is centred on certain work/application settings and is concerned with the involvement of representative users from these contexts. Nevertheless, current web technologies enable new forms of distributed participation which might allow PD processes to be implemented in a broader and flexible way, but may at the same time raise new issues in relation to participation. In this paper, we report on a Participatory Product Development project, using social technologies, where new issues were raised—a large population of heterogeneous and globally distributed users; a range of personal and institutional purposes, and the use of these technologies in a largely untested environment. We will reflect on insights that we gathered by through observation of and participation in a software development process driven and influenced by members of an existing online community. By means of participatory observation, analysis of the use of online tools and through semi- structured interviews we identified issues around different notions of timeliness and of process structures that are related to different roles, responsibilities and levels of experience. Our results indicate that the involvement of heterogeneous users in such a context needs to be handled carefully, for the reasons we set out. The role of user representatives acting for a broader online community can become crucial when managing heterogeneity, formulating acceptable compromises and- perhaps most crucially- dealing with different professional and ‘hobbyist’ worldviews. Additionally, we found that the use of standard web technologies only partly support online participation processes. PD ‘in the wild’ needs to be better embedded in use situations and environments (e.g., by linking discussion and design space, using feedback tools, continuous reflection of the current state of development) rather than refining participatory design as a meta-process separate from use.     

The search for a research method for studying OSS process innovation

Medium-sized, open-participation Open Source Software (OSS) projects do not usually perform explicit software process improvement on any routine basis. It would be useful to understand how to get such a project to accept a process improvement proposal and hence to perform process innovation. We want to determine an effective and feasible qualitative research method for studying the above question. We present (narratively) a case study of how we worked towards and eventually found such a research method. The case involves four attempts at collecting suitable data about innovation episodes (direct participation (twice), polling developers for episodes, manually finding episodes in mailing list archives) and the adaptation of the Grounded Theory data analysis methodology. Direct participation allows gathering rather rich data, but does not allow for observing a sufficiently large number of innovation episodes. Polling developers for episodes did not prove to be useful. Using mailing list archives to find data to be analyzed is both feasible and effective. We also describe how the data thus found can be analyzed based on the Grounded Theory Method with suitable adjustments. By-and-large, our findings ought to apply to studying various phenomena in OSS development processes that are similarly heavyweight and infrequent. However, specific details may block this possibility and we cannot predict which details that might be. The amount of effort involved in direct participation approaches to qualitative research can easily be underestimated. Also, survey approaches are not well-suited for many process issues in OSS, because too few developers are sufficiently process-conscious. An approach based on passive observation is a viable alternative in the OSS context due to the availability of large amounts of fairly complete archival data.     

Virtual communities as a resource for the development of OSS projects: the case of Linux ports to embedded processors

Open source software (OSS) projects represent a new paradigm of software creation and development based on hundreds or even thousands of developers and users organised in the form of a virtual community. The success of an OSS project is closely linked to the successful organisation and development of the virtual community of support. The main objective of this article is to analyse the activity of virtual communities. Social network analysis is employed to analyse Linux ports to embedded processors as a case study to achieve this aim. The obtained results confirm the necessity of structuring the virtual community with a selection of active developers and core members to promote community activity and attract peripheral users, expanding the impact of the underlying software. The obtained result will be useful for the software industry migrating to the open source software paradigm.     

A Methodological Framework for Socio-Cognitive Analyses of Collaborative Design of Open Source Software

Open Source Software (OSS) development challenges traditional software engineering practices. In particular, OSS projects are managed by a large number of volunteers, working freely on the tasks they choose to undertake. OSS projects also rarely rely on explicit system-level design, or on project plans or schedules. Moreover, OSS developers work in arbitrary locations and collaborate almost exclusively over the Internet, using simple tools such as email and software code tracking databases (e.g. CVS).All the characteristics above make OSS development akin to weaving a tapestry of heterogeneous components. The OSS design process relies on various types of actors: people with prescribed roles, but also elements coming from a variety of information spaces (such as email and software code). The objective of our research is to understand the specific hybrid weaving accomplished by the actors of this distributed, collective design process. This, in turn, challenges traditional methodologies used to understand distributed software engineering: OSS development is simply too “fibrous” to lend itself well to analysis under a single methodological lens.In this paper, we describe the methodological framework we articulated to analyze collaborative design in the Open Source world. Our framework focuses on the links between the heterogeneous components of a project’s hybrid network. We combine ethnography, text mining, and socio-technical network analysis and visualization to understand OSS development in its totality. This way, we are able to simultaneously consider the social, technical, and cognitive aspects of OSS development. We describe our methodology in detail, and discuss its implications for future research on distributed collective practices.The order of the co-authors names is not significant.     

Understanding OSS development in communities: the perspectives of ideology and knowledge sharing

This study aims to understand why open source software (OSS) developers contribute and how their dispersed efforts are controlled to lead to viable outputs. Drawing on theories related to ideology and information sharing, a model is proposed and tested empirically. We found that OSS values are positively associated with collaborative elaboration and communication competence, which in turn affect the performance of OSS task in terms of task completion. Our results also delineate the relationship among OSS norms, collaborative elaboration and source credibility, and task completion. This research contributes to advancing theoretical understanding of OSS performance as well as providing OSS practitioners with guidelines on how OSS communities use OSS ideology to achieve better performance.     

Virtual organizational learning in open source software development projects

We studied virtual organizational learning in open source software (OSS) development projects. Specifically, our research focused on learning effects of OSS projects and the factors that affect the learning process. The number and percentage of resolved bugs and bug resolution time of 118 SourceForge.net OSS projects were used to measure the learning effects. Projects were characterized by project type, number and experience of developers, number of bugs, and bug resolution time. Our results provided evidence of virtual organizational learning in OSS development projects and support for several factors as determinants of performance. Team size was a significant predictor, with mid-sized project teams functioning best. Teams of three to seven developers exhibited the highest efficiency over time and teams of eight to 15 produced the lowest mean time for bug resolution. Increasing the percentage of bugs assigned to specific developers or boosting developer participation in other OSS projects also improved performance. Furthermore, project type introduced variability in project team performance.     

Empowering the users? A critical textual analysis of the role of users in open source software development

This paper outlines a critical, textual approach for the analysis of the relationship between different actors in information technology (IT) production, and further concretizes the approach in the analysis of the role of users in the open source software (OSS) development literature. Central concepts of the approach are outlined. The role of users is conceptualized as reader involvement aiming to contribute to the configuration of the reader (to how users and the parameters for their work practices are defined in OSS texts). Afterwards, OSS literature addressing reader involvement is critically reviewed. In OSS context, the OSS writers as readers configure the reader and other readers are assumed to be capable of and interested in commenting the texts. A lack of OSS research on non-technical reader involvement is identified. Furthermore, not only are the OSS readers configured, but so are OSS writers. In OSS context while writers may be empowered, this clearly does not apply to the non-technical OSS readers. Implication for research and practice are discussed.

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Experience to understand: a methodology for integrating users into the design for kitchen interactions

The kitchen is a place where many interactions happen every day. It is a place where new technologies and tradition meet. What makes a place a smart kitchen? This article describes our research over 29 months with a group representing typical users—we will call them the kitchen heroes. We involved them in a process of interaction design (IxD) for the kitchen following the tradition of participatory design (PD), to find out the potential of such a collaboration. We asked ourselves how could we, together with the intended users design for better, seamless interaction in the kitchen? Our research showed that designing for kitchen demands a high and consistent level of engagement of all the stakeholders if we are to design a truly smart and human-centred kitchen. How then, could we integrate them into the interaction design process? As an answer we developed a methodology for the integration of all the stakeholders into the whole design process. We focused on the early design phases and the ways to trigger engagement. The methodology we developed is named EPUI and consists of four parts: exploration, participation, understanding and integration. This article illustrates the EPUI methodology for successfully integrating kitchen users into the kitchen interaction design and fruitful participatory design. It is based on and combines benefits from methodologies such as PD, ADR, PADR, while in the article we explain how it also contributes to their flaws. Additionally, we present our lessons learned while implementing the EPUI methodology and offer tools to both seasoned and less-experienced researchers.     

Increasing the Usability of Online Information for Older Users: A Case Study in Participatory Design

This article describes one of the first documented participatory design (PD) efforts specifically aimed at older users. The goal of the project was to make an existing World Wide Web (WWW) site more user-friendly for older users, specifically in terms of display format issues. A PD team was assembled from a group of community-dwelling older adults and developers from a university research lab. After the developers established the trust and confidence of the participants and developed a conceptual user model (based on a survey and previous literature), the PD team evaluated the original design. Prototypes were iteratively developed and tested by the PD team to improve problems found in the original design. Specific design improvements and general design guidelines for older WWW users are discussed.     

基于SNMP协议的OSS网络管理系统的研究

本文首先探讨了OSS的发展以及SNMP协议的网络管理标准。通过对相关OSS软件的研究．进一步探讨了其程序的实现过程，分析了SNMP协议在实际网络管理中的具体应用。     

Role of ICTs in participatory development: An Indian experience

Participation of local communities has been important at least in two domains: (a) rural development processes in developing countries and (b) information systems design. The issue of participation becomes especially important in the contemporary contexts in which the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) is being integrated within rural development initiatives in developing countries, for example in e-governance. This article attempts to synthesize the issues around participation from both IS and development studies literature in order to identify four key problematic areas: viz., (a) who defines the participation agenda, (b) what capabilities do stakeholders have to participate and how can this be strengthened, (c) what is the role of institutional conditions in enabling effective participation, and (d) how do local participatory processes experiences get integrated into broader networks to become sustainable. These four themes provide a theoretical framework to analyze how the use of ICTs is reconfiguring the dynamics between participation, rural development, and ICTs. This framework is applied in the context of an ICT initiative for rural development in India. Implications for both theory and practice are developed based on the need to judiciously integrate both structural and behavioral approaches to participation. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Mutual development in mass collaboration: Identifying interaction patterns in customer-initiated software product development

In this paper we investigate computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) and innovation in a large-scale distributed setting. Get Satisfaction (GS), a social media platform for involving customers in product development activities, is our case study. In order to identify how end users contribute to product development, we researched the interactions between end users, champions, and professional developers in this online community as they jointly constructed a shared artifact (a web application). We collected publicly available platform interaction data over a six-month period (N = 229 users). The methods we employed are social network analysis (SNA) and interaction analysis (IA), which we combined in a mixed-methods design. At the network level, we identified key actors according to centrality measures. At the interaction level, we zoomed in on specific interactions. We propose a model of mass collaboration in terms of four interaction patterns: 1) gatekeeping, control of excessive information sharing, 2) bridge building, spreading information across groups in the network, 3) general development, allowing professional developers to create new software functionality and update existing software, and 4) user-user collaboration, facilitating non-centrally organized development activities, ranging from feature requests to local development. We discuss our findings and compare them with related research.     

基于SNMP协议的OSS网络管理系统的研究

本文首先探讨了OSS的发展以及SNMP协议的网络管理标准。通过对相关OSS软件的研究,进一步探讨了其程序的实现过程,分析了SNMP协议在实际网络管理中的具体应用。     

Child-centered game development (CCGD): developing games with children at school

Children represent an increasingly relevant target group of the game industry. Nevertheless, they are rarely involved in development processes. This article introduces child-centered game development (CCGD) approaches for the game design within the context of the school. Therefore, suitable HCI approaches from user-centered and participatory design as well as educational principles and approaches were used as a foundation. The CCGD approaches illustrate how to guide the involvement and participation of children aged 10–14 years in school classes within the development process of games. Approaches for the analysis, conceptualization, and design phases were developed and applied.     

The factors that affect the performance of open source software development – the perspective of social capital and expertise integration

Drawing on social capital theory, we develop a theoretical model aiming to explore how open source software (OSS) project effectiveness (in terms of team size, team effort and team's level of completion) is affected by expertise integration. This in turn is influenced by three types of social capital – relational capital, cognitive capital and structural capital. In addition, this study also examines two moderating effects – the impact of technical complexity on the relationship between cognitive capital and expertise integration, and of task interdependence on the relationship between expertise integration and task completion. Through a field survey of 160 OSS members from five Taiwanese communities, there is support for some of the proposed hypotheses. Both reciprocity and centrality affect expertise integration as expected, but the influence of commitment and cognitive capital (including expertise and tenure) on expertise integration is not significant. Finally, expertise integration affects both team size and team effort, which in turn jointly influence task completion. This research contributes to advancing theoretical understanding of the effectiveness of free OSS development as well as providing OSS practitioners with insight into how to leverage social capital for improving the performance of OSS development.     

An improved Pareto distribution for modelling the fault data of open source software

In the modern society, software plays a very important role in many application systems. Consequently, the main goal of project managers and software engineers is to deliver reliable software within very limited resource, time and budget during the software development life cycle. Presently, it is widely recognized that open source software (OSS) has developed as a new (and novel) form of both personal and aggregation production. In the past, some research has shown that the traditional Pareto distribution (PD) and the Weibull distribution models can be used to describe the distribution of software faults of OSS. However, there could be a negative value for the cumulative probability of the traditional PD model in some cases. In this paper, based on our past studies, a modified Pareto‐based distribution model, called the single‐change‐point 2‐parameter generalized PD (SCP‐2GPD) model is proposed. The method of choosing an appropriate change‐point is presented and illustrated. Some mathematical properties of the proposed model are also discussed. Experiments are conducted using several real OSS data, and evaluation results show that our proposed SCP‐2GPD model depicts the real‐life situation of the software development life cycle more faithfully and accurately. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An open source usability maturity model (OS-UMM)

User satisfaction has always been a major factor in the success of software, regardless of whether it is closed proprietary or open source software (OSS). In open source projects, usability aspects cannot be improved unless there are ways to test and measure them. Hence, the increasing popularity of open source projects among novice and non-technical users necessitates a usability evaluation methodology. Consequently, this paper presents a usability maturity model specifically aimed at usability-related issues for open source projects. In particular, the model examines the degree of coordination between open source projects and their usability aspects. The measuring instrument of the model contains factors that have been selected from four of our empirical studies, which examine the perspectives of OSS users, developers, contributors and the industry. In addition to presenting the usability maturity model, this paper discusses assessment questionnaires, a rating methodology and two case studies.     

Socialization in an Open Source Software Community: A Socio-Technical Analysis

Open Source Software (OSS) development is often characterized as a fundamentally new way to develop software. Past analyses and discussions, however, have treated OSS projects and their organization mostly as a static phenomenon. Consequently, we do not know how these communities of software developers are sustained and reproduced over time through the progressive integration of new members. To shed light on this issue I report on my analyses of socialization in a particular OSS community. In particular, I document the relationships OSS newcomers develop over time with both the social and material aspects of a project. To do so, I combine two mutually informing activities: ethnography and the use of software specially designed to visualize and explore the interacting networks of human and material resources incorporated in the email and code databases of OSS. Socialization in this community is analyzed from two perspectives: as an individual learning process and as a political process. From these analyses it appears that successful participants progressively construct identities as software craftsmen, and that this process is punctuated by specific rites of passage. Successful participants also understand the political nature of software development and progressively enroll a network of human and material allies to support their efforts. I conclude by discussing how these results could inform the design of software to support socialization in OSS projects, as well as practical implications for the future of these projects.     

Users’ perception of open source usability: an empirical study

The number of open source software (OSS) users has increased in recent years. No longer are they limited to technically adept software developers. Many believe that the OSS market share could increase tremendously provided OSS had systems that were easier to use. Although examples of good usable open source software exist, it is agreed that OSS can be made more usable. This study presents an empirical investigation into the impact of some key factors on OSS usability from the end users’ point of view. The research model studies and establishes the relationship between the key usability factors from the users’ perspective and OSS usability. A data set of 102 OSS users from 13 open source projects of various sizes was used to study the research model. The results of this study provide empirical evidence by indicating that the highlighted key factors play a significant role in improving OSS usability.     

Participatory Design in Consulting

This article addresses the use of participatory design (PD) techniques in non-research projects from the perspective of consulting. The central categories for analyzing the course of action and the relationship of actors are risks perceived by consultants, customers, and clients. The basis of this article is a large number of consulting projects where participatory techniques were used. Overall it seems feasible to use PD in consulting. Still using PD, especially as a consultant in systems-design, has to be considered risky for both consultants and customers. Therefore techniques that reduce risks are crucial. Several such techniques are well known (steering committee, milestones, prototyping). Some additional, more PD-specific techniques are discussed. The analysis further led to the issues of organizing the technical process and the group process. Both processes are important when using PD in consulting. The technical process assumes responsibility and thereby requires involvement in order to secure contracts. At the same time this conflicts with the group process where neutrality is needed. Therefore, separation of facilitation from design by working in teams of two is considered. This also supports the expertise needed for such projects as it is sometimes difficult to find individuals with both qualifications.