Participation architectures for free and open-source software innovation

Free, Open-Source Software (FOSS) communities are centered on software product innovation. But the social organization of FOSS communities of practice and inappropriate technology platform design can discourage product users from engaging with FOSS communities. The process of suggesting, exploring, and gaining acceptance for new software features can be daunting. We study trajectories of user-participation and social network structures in a vertically-integrated FOSS community to explore what distinguishes successful from unsuccessful participation architecture. We identify socio-cultural and IT platform design (instrumental) barriers to new feature acceptance, to suggest socio-technical affordances for FOSS participation architectures

Applying a Usability Technique in the Open Source Software Development Process: Experiences from the Trenches

The growth in the number of non-developer open source software (OSS) application users has drawn attention to usability in the OSS community. OSS communities do not generally know how to apply usability techniques and are unclear about which techniques to use in each activity of the development process. The aim of our research is to determine the feasibility of applying the focus groups technique in the OSS ERMaster project. To do this, we participated as project volunteers. We used the case study research method to investigate technique application and OSS community participation. As a result, we identified adverse conditions that were an obstacle to the application of the original technique. We then adapted the technique to make it applicable in an OSS project. We can conclude that was not easy to recruit OSS users and developers to participate in technique application

Sustaining scientific infrastructures: transitioning from grants to peer production (work-in-progress)

Science now relies on mid-level infrastructure, including shared instruments, cell lines, supercomputing resources, data sets, and software components. These are beyond the facilities and services traditionally provided by individual universities; funding agencies such as the NSF often support their initial creation but their long-term sustainability is a challenge and commercialization is only rarely an option. A promising model, though, is broad-based community support through peer production, often inspired by the organization of open source software projects. Such transitions, though, are not automatic or easy, just as commercialization is not. In this research I am studying successful and unsuccessful attempts to transition, building theory and practical guidance for scientists and funding agencies. In this work-in-progress paper, I present the motivation and background for the study and provide motivation through preliminary description of my first case study.ye

User Participation in Software Design via Social Media: Experiences from a Case Study with Consumers

User participation has proved to have many benefits in software development. The traditional methods for participation rely mainly on face-to-face meetings and are therefore not easily applicable to designing online services targeted at distributed consumers. Social media have become widely used among consumers and could thus offer many opportunities for involving users in software design. We present a case study in which a group of users participated for over six months in the process of designing a new online service via social media tools. The users played an active role in the development of the system, tailoring it to their own needs. Our results show that social media provide real possibilities for user involvement in software design and also shape some elements of the participation process. In social media, user contributions are mainly small and dispersed over time, but users can be involved almost continuously in the design process, thus enabling them to have a more active role in decision-making. Software development practices need to be modified so that small user contributions fit into the process

Adapting usability techniques for application in open source Software: A multiple case study

Context: As a result of the growth of non-developer users of OSS applications, usability has over the last ten years begun to attract the interest of the open source software (OSS) community. The OSS community has some special characteristics (such as worldwide geographical distribution of both users and developers and missing resources) which are an obstacle to the direct adoption of many usability techniques as specified in the human-computer interaction (HCI) field. Objective: The aim of this research is to adapt and evaluate the feasibility of applying four usability techniques: user profiles, personas, direct observation and post-test information to four OSS projects from the viewpoint of the development team. Method: The applied research method was a multiple case study of the following OSS projects: Quite Universal Circuit Simulator, PSeInt, FreeMind and OpenOffice Writer. Results: We formalized the application procedure of each of the adapted usability techniques. We found that either there were no procedures for adopting usability techniques in OSS or they were not fully systematized. Additionally, we identified the adverse conditions that are an obstacle to their adoption in OSS and propose the special adaptations required to overcome the obstacles. To avoid some of the adverse conditions, we created web artefacts (online survey, wiki and forum) that are very popular in the OSS field. Conclusion: It is necessary to adapt usability techniques for application in OSS projects considering their idiosyncrasy. Additionally, we found that there are obstacles (for example, number of participant users, biased information provided by developers) to the application of the techniques. Despite these obstacles, it is feasible to apply the adapted techniques in OSS projectsThis research was funded by the Secretariat of Higher Education, Science, Technology and Innovation (SENESCYT) of the Government of Ecuador as part of an academic scholarship granted for postgradu- ate training, and Quevedo State Technical University through doctoral scholarships for university professors. Also this research was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports FLEXOR ( TIN2014-52129-R ) and TIN2014-60490-P projects and the eMadrid- CM project ( S2013/ICE-2715 ). Finally, this research received funding from the University of Atacama “DIUDA 22316 ”projec

Participation à la conception et qualité du produit dans les communautés en ligne épistémiques : nouvelles directions de recherche en ergonomie des activités de conception

Cet article porte sur les communautés en ligne à finalité de production de connaissances, ou communautés épistémiques, telles que les communautés de conception de logiciels open source et les communautés Wikipedia. L’objectif de cet article est d’identifier et de développer plusieurs questions de recherche que ces nouvelles formes de collectifs posent à l’ergonomie. Après un positionnement théorique sur ces collectifs vus comme des collectifs de conception, nous développerons trois lignes de questionnement centrées sur le processus et le produit de la conception. Une première direction de questionnement porte sur les formes de participation dans ces communautés abordées sous l’angle de l’analyse de l’activité. Une deuxième direction concerne les mécanismes de soutien socio-techniques à la participation et notamment au maintien d’une conscience de la situation et d’une conscience sociale. Enfin nous traiterons plus particulièrement de la question de la qualité du produit de la conception. Chaque thème est abordé en dressant un état de l’art et en indiquant des pistes de recherche, certaines pluridisciplinaires.This paper focuses on the study of online epistemic communities, whose aim is to construct knowledge objects, such as open source software (OSS) and encyclopaediæ (Wikipedia). We aim to examine and expand on several issues that these communities raise for design ergonomics research. Our theoretical position is that these epistemic communities can be studied as new kinds of design collectives. Three lines of research are outlined concerning design processes and products. The first pertains to the various forms of participation in these communities, using work analyses. The second addresses the socio-technical mechanisms that support participation, in particular situation and social awareness support. Finally, the question of product quality is discussed. With respect to each research approach, a critical review of the literature and a research agenda for multidisciplinary research are put forward

Réplica del diseño experimental sobre la mejora de la usabilidad en el proyecto openoffice writer

Ámbito: En las últimas décadas, el software de código abierto (que a partir de ahora nos referiremos a él como OSS debido a sus siglas Open Source Software) ha alcanzado mucha importancia, conformando comunidades de usuarios y desarrolladores y convirtiéndose en un componente importante dentro de la Informática. No obstante, varios investigadores reconocen en sus estudios el problema de la escasa usabilidad, debido especialmente al amplio crecimiento de los usuarios que no se dedican a desarrollar sus aplicaciones. Más aún, hay escasos trabajos en la literatura que realicen réplicas de experimentos y agreguen los resultados de estos a fin de obtener evidencias empíricas consolidadas sobre la influencia de aspectos de usabilidad en aplicaciones OSS. Objetivo: El presente trabajo tiene dos objetivos: a) la realización de una réplica exacta del experimento de línea base llevado a cabo en 2019 para evaluar la satisfacción y la eficiencia de los usuarios que han participado durante el experimento después de aplicar los aspectos de usabilidad, es decir los plugins Letra Capital y Encabezado/Pie de Página, en el proyecto OSS OpenOffice Writer (OOW) mediante la realización de dos tareas distintas (Tarea 1 y Tarea 2); y b) la agregación de dos conjuntos de datos de una familia de dos experimentos (el experimento Base y el experimento Réplica del presente estudio experimental), para que, por medio de la adopción de métodos de meta-análisis, sea posible constatar la coherencia de los resultados que se obtengan a partir de la mencionada familia de experimentos y la determinación de conclusiones sólidas a fin de mejorar la usabilidad del proyecto OSS OOW. Método de Investigación: Se han seguido tres fases para esta investigación. En primer lugar, se analizó el diseño experimental factorial cruzado definido previamente y la aplicación OSS de OOW. En segundo lugar, se ha procedido a la realización del experimento siguiendo dicho diseño experimental, y se ha efectuado la agregación de datos del experimento Base con los resultados del presente estudio experimental, el experimento Réplica. Posteriormente, con los datos recabados se procedió a realizar un examen detallado de los mismos, en el que se han estudiado las variables de eficiencia y satisfacción, tras la recolección de los datos de número de clics, tiempo dedicado a completar la tarea y grado de satisfacción de los participantes por cada tarea, sin aplicar los aspectos de usabilidad incorporados en la aplicación OOW y tras el empleo de los mismos. En este estudio se han analizado y comparado los estadísticos descriptivos y diagramas de violín complementados con gráficos de perfil. Para concluir este estudio, se han realizado test ANOVA de tipo III con el método Satterthwaite para comprobar las hipótesis del experimento. En tercer lugar, hemos analizado el meta-análisis realizado a partir del cual hemos interpretado los resultados. Resultados: Los resultados del meta-análisis permiten afirmar que las mejoras de usabilidad en la aplicación OOW influyen positivamente de forma significativa en la eficiencia medida como la rapidez (tiempo) que tardan los usuarios en finalizar las tareas. No obstante, parece que la eficiencia medida como la cantidad total de clics que realizan los participantes en cada tarea (nivel de interacción) y la satisfacción de los usuarios al realizar cada tarea no se vieron afectadas de manera significativa con la presencia de los aspectos de usabilidad incorporados en OOW. Conclusión: A partir de las evidencias empíricas obtenidas de la agregación de datos, podemos afirmar que los usuarios son más rápidos para realizar las tareas a causa de los aspectos de usabilidad de Letra Capital y Encabezado/Pie de Página incorporados en OOW. Parece que las siguientes dos cuestiones: la Tarea 2 era más laboriosa que la Tarea 1 (por lo que tardaban un mayor tiempo en realizarla) unido a que los usuarios no tenían experiencia con los aspectos de usabilidad (es decir, no los usaban adecuadamente), han afectado directamente tanto al nivel de interacción de los usuarios con OOW como a su satisfacción. Por lo tanto, podemos concluir que, tanto el nivel de interacción como el de satisfacción deben mejorarse mediante la realización de menos clics por cada tarea y el conocimiento de la funcionalidad de los aspectos de usabilidad para una mayor comodidad de los usuario

Universal Plug-n-Play Sensor Integration for Advanced Navigation

This research investigates the potential for Plug-n-Play sensor integration for navigation and other applications. Specifically, the requirements of such a system are outlined and attempts are made to achieve them using two separate systems: one using Robot Operating System (ROS) as middleware and the other using more traditional software design patterns. The end result is not so much a deliverable in terms of software, but more of a feasibility analysis comparing the two approaches