Lessons Learned from the

FLOSS Usability Sprint

Eugene Eric Kim <eekim@blueoxen.org>

March 8, 2005

BayCHI, Xerox PARC, Palo Alto, California

Met Doug Engelbart at a 1998 BayCHI talk...

... led to founding of Blue Oxen Associates in 2002

How do we make open source software more usable?

Have open source developers observe users

Have usability practitioners work with open source developers

Teach developers about usability

It's a collaborative problem!

Why a Sprint?

Goals: Improve usability of specific projects and perturb the ecosystem.

Make the community smarter, not just the individuals.

Leave them wanting more.

The Sprint

Partnered with Aspiration.

Allen Gunn (“Gunner”)

Katrin Verclas

3 sponsors, 5 supporters

40 participants

12 usability practitioners, the rest developers, project managers, “bridges”

February 18-20 at J. Fairchild in San Francisco

Projects

AMP, Chandler, CivicSpace, FotoNotes, Identity Commons, OpenACS

Nonprofit audience

Funded

Four of the six projects had active “bridges”

Outcomes

Improved the projects.

Greater awareness, shared understanding.

Open source is in the best interests of usability practitioners.

Extreme Usability.

New collaborative projects emerged.

Open Sourcing Usability

Left them wanting more.

Next Steps

Another sprint.

Extreme Design.

Get involved!

FLOSS Usability BOF

Bootcamp

Research, publications

Participate!

2005-03-08T14:20:39