Usability Studies

[Matthias Kirschner]

Hi there,

for an interview I was asked if Free Software is less useable than
non-free software. Do you have any good studies which I can include in
the reply?

Thanks,
Matthias

[Giacomo Poderi]

Hi,

Post by Matthias Kirschner
for an interview I was asked if Free Software is less useable than
non-free software. Do you have any good studies which I can include in
the reply?

AFAIK

there's no academic study which *specifically* compares usability in proprietary
software against Free Software.

Usually, that FS involve more usability problems than proprietary software is
the assumption that is used to bring forward other specific research aims.

If you want to have a quick look at one of these ref. They are the ones that are

Post by Matthias Kirschner
Andreasen, M. S., Nielsen, H., Schroder, S., & Stage, J. (2006). Usability in open source software development: opinions and practice. Information technology and control, 25(3A), 303?12.
Nichols, D., & Twidale, M. (2003). The Usability of Open Source Software. First Monday, 8(1). Retrieved from http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1018/939
Nichols, D. M., & Twidale, M. B. (2006). Usability processes in open source projects. Software Process: Improvement and Practice, 11(2), 149-162. doi:10.1002/spip.256
Terry, M., Kay, M., & Lafreniere, B. (2010). Perceptions and practices of usability in the free/open source software (FoSS) community. In Proceedings of the 28th international conference on Human factors in computing systems (pp. 999-1008). Atlanta, Georgia, USA: ACM. doi:10.1145/1753326.1753476

[Irmhild Rogalla]

Hi,

Hi,

Post by Matthias Kirschner
for an interview I was asked if Free Software is less useable than
non-free software. Do you have any good studies which I can include in
the reply?

only a link: http://www.opensource-usability-labs.com/

may be, Bj?rn B. knows something more about this topic ...
(he's also based in Berlin)

kind regards
Irmhild

[Jan-Christoph Borchardt]

The Berlin-based usability company relevantive did a comparative usability
study of KDE and Windows XP back in 2003:
https://www.relevantive.de/Linux-Usabilitystudie.html

Disclaimer: I currently intern at relevantive.

Post by Irmhild Rogalla
Hi,

Hi,

Post by Matthias Kirschner
for an interview I was asked if Free Software is less useable than
non-free software. Do you have any good studies which I can include in
the reply?

only a link: http://www.opensource-usability-labs.com/
may be, Bj??rn B. knows something more about this topic ...
(he's also based in Berlin)
kind regards
Irmhild
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[Bjoern Schiessle]

Hi Matthias,

Post by Matthias Kirschner
for an interview I was asked if Free Software is less useable than
non-free software. Do you have any good studies which I can include in
the reply?

Some years ago Novell did some usability studies regarding GNOME and KDE.
Afaik this studies doesn't compare the usability with other (proprietary)
desktops but maybe you can use it to show that Free Software desktops
care about usability and that they actively work on usability issues.

[1] http://www.betterdesktop.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main

best wishes,
Bj?rn

[Sam Tuke]

Post by Matthias Kirschner
for an interview I was asked if Free Software is less useable than
non-free software. Do you have any good studies which I can include in
the reply?

As I recall, Novell did extensive usability testing a few years ago and the
results were widely reported and in the favour of FS DEs.

AFAIK Gnome and KDE haven't done extensive scientific usability studies for
current versions. Perhaps the Gnome accessibility team have some data that you
could use?

KDE used to do regular polling and testing of new icons using an online
system, but that is very specific and probably not useful.

Also, GIMP has (or had) an excellent usability expert working on the new
interface, and he did much blogging on the redesign (yet to be launched). That
guy may also have done research for other FS projects.

Thanks,

Sam.
--
Sam Tuke
British Team Coordinator
Free Software Foundation Europe
IM : samtuke at jabber.fsfe.org

Document Freedom Day - Liberate your documents!
http://documentfreedom.org - March 30th 2011
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[Matthias Kirschner]

Post by Matthias Kirschner
for an interview I was asked if Free Software is less useable than
non-free software. Do you have any good studies which I can include in
the reply?

Thanks to all for your references.
Matthias

[Michael Kesper]

Hi,

Post by Matthias Kirschner
for an interview I was asked if Free Software is less useable than
non-free software. Do you have any good studies which I can include in
the reply?

Often it is more usable. Look at this paper about blender UI [0], via [1].

Best wishes
Michael

[0] http://download.blender.org/documentation/bc2008/evolution_of_blenders_ui.pdf
[1] http://lwn.net/Articles/428118/
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