Open source software has historically been developed for and by developers. It is a meritocracy where individuals gain respect through their direct contributions to the end product. This creates an intrinsic reward system for the developers whereby respect and privileges are accorded to those who do things like “play well with others,” provide good feedback and assistance, but most importantly contribute good, solid, workable code.
UI Designers generally don't produce code. UI Designer Rashmi Sinha talks about this issue in her blog 1
“ . . . The problem of currency: In any system people exchange goods and services using some typeof currency. The currency could be any arbitrary thing - it could be fish, cows, or massages.In the open source world, it happens to be code. The problem is that usability professionalsgenerally do not write code.”
While quite successful for projects such as Linux and Apache, this is problematic for end-user applications that are used by the faculty and students in higher ed to support their daily scholarly, teaching, and learning activities. Developers can no longer design for themselves; they have to design for users whose goals are nothing like their own (a good read on this is Alan Cooper's book, “The Inmates are running the Asylum 2”). Developers need UI Designers and Instructional designers to help them translate instructional, scholarly goals into specifications and prototypes. However, in an environment where code is king, what rewards are available for individuals with these other critical skills to participate? Do we even have the right ecosystem in which for them to engage them in the first place?
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