One of the largest benefits of open source software can also be a sizable UX challenge. The ability to easily localize and change the code means that often development teams and users don't have a common or consistent experience and it is difficult to conduct user testing. On the one hand, proprietary products with closed code won't let us make the experience more meaningful to our users, but on the other, with open source we have the unique opportunity to make a mess of it! An instance of uPortal at UBC may be completely different from uPortal at Yale. So how do we conduct usability tests? This issue is something that the Fluid Project 1 is exploring now as it prepares for its first round of “user experience walk-throughs” on Sakai, Moodle, and uPortal 2. They have designed a set of protocols that are already being utilized by other community source projects.
- 778 reads
