Leadership is a problem but not the problem
I was referred to a recent CNet article, Usability, a question of (open source) leadership, which talks about an interview with the Linux Foundation’s president Jim Zemlin on the topic of open source usability. I’m glad to see the higher-ups thinking about usability on this problem-solving level. The Linux Foundation has always been supportive of design activities in open source, with the OpenPrinting workgroup as a good example.
However, leadership is not the primary problem. While it is good to be thinking about these things, we won’t get very far without addressing the right problems. That’ why we haven’t gotten further than we are now.
My comment to the article:
I can’t say I completely agree. If you look at the literature of the professionals actually doing open source usability, leadership is only a secondary problem (in addition to developer-designer communication and lack of professionals involved). The primary reason usability in open source fails is that there is no vision or understanding of who the product is for. This can be solved on the developer level, and even at this level can and will make an impact. Things like leadership, communication, and professional involvement support user research and acceptance of the findings on a project-level. Sure, these things are very important too, but not the root of the problem…
Lack of leadership, especially when it comes to making design decisions, is certainly a problem. Having good leadership to help push good design practices such as user research is definitely good. But let us not forget this is not the root of the problem. Leadership will not get us anywhere if the user research does not get done. Without a vision or definition of your product users, what is there to lead? You can’t get the other “usability” activities done without a clear understanding of who your product is for and what they will be doing with it. Good leaders can help define this vision or definition, but it needs to be done at the developer level, not at the management level.
What we need are good people (developers or designers) to do user research, with good leadership to support it.
Unfortunately one of the advantages of FOSS over proprietary software is it’s ‘Longtail’ property, the ability to be tailored to an almost infinite number of different users and usecases. So there’s an issue which is hard to solve…
Hi Celeste Lyn.
I think you make a good point on usability on open source. I think you are taking a lead in this yourself. So, in fact, by setting a good example and helping others to achieve better usability in open source apps, by providing the information via studies and support, you are THE leader in this regard.
The only thing that I disagree on with you is the fact that the leader is not the problem. Without someone inspiring people, guiding people and supporting people, no idea will become reality unless you do it yourself.
So keep it up and you’ll see, you will BE that leader just by helping others and by creating and communicating a vision.
Kind regards, Ruud
(here via Planet Ubuntu)
Goal-setting, mission-writing and the communication of a vision of the future are together one of the primary activities of a leader. Another is to emphasize shared values in a way that unites people behind that vision.
While leadership and management are complementary, they are distinct in that the latter deals with execution *after* the former has answered your key question: “What is there to lead?” As Ruud says, when there are no real leaders on the “management level”, the result is a void that must be filled by leaders who do not hold official positions.
Ultimately it’s a chicken-and-egg debate, but one could argue that no user research is being done because developers haven’t been *led* to feel that it is the number one priority. I hope you’ll continue your efforts to change this.
“The primary reason usability in open source fails is that there is no vision or understanding of who the product is for.”
I disagree with this, I think that there is a clear vision of who the product is for (most of the time), it’s for ourselves. A lot of free software is voluntarily written. For example the user interface for VIM, or Emacs is rather good. You can become much faster by learning the commands, you become a magician with your text.
The biggest issue in user interfaces in free software, is a lack of participation from users who are currently using non-free software. The great thing about free software, is that anyone can pick it up and improve it. However the likely hood that anyone individual would do this is unlikely, as they will not likely feel that they should put so much burden on themselves. The main thing that people pay for in proprietary software is that they know that a large group of people are also doing the same thing. Wikipedia succeeds on a similar model, you’re willing to give them money, or contribute by other means, because you know a lot of other people are doing the same thing. For many folks, the massive amount of support behind free software is not very visible. How do you convince someone that doesn’t really care about being free with their software, to use free software? They will say, “what do I care, I don’t want to change it, nor do I have the knowledge to anyways”. I would say to them, “Well you may not care about it *now*, but after using the software for a while you will likely find something you would like to change. It’s like driving down a long windy road for hours only to discover it’s a dead end. I’m not to say that you can’t drive down a dead end road, but there should atleast be a sign that says it’s a dead end.”
In either case, egg or the chicken; i’ve done a tiny bit of user identifying for a project I’ve started to develop. Here is the email: http://sfdcenter.org/pipermail/sparrow/2008-March/000015.html
@Celeste: I would have to disagree with your assessment of leadership’s role in this. Like what Paul Kishimoto said (and I believe we both get the idea from Stephen Covey), leadership is what makes sure that “we’re doing the right things”, not just doing things right (that’s management). This goes back to my comment in your previous blog. Most developers are more of managers and producers. Everyone’s focused on producing. Seeing or defining the big picture involves a bit of stepping back. Leaders are the one who are able to do that. (Of course, the leaders might also be the managers/producers). So in a way, it is a question of leadership.
@Braydon: Which product are you referring to? While it is true that some software started as a “for geeks, by geeks” thing, some of it has grown beyond that. Some even started with other users in mind. That’s why it’s a good question to ask who the software is for, a this given moment in time. Goals and target users change over time. But we need a point of reference for a given period in time. That’s what a mission-vision is for.
But I do agree that non-participation of users is a hindering factor. I believe that mass adoption of/migration to GNU/Linux have brought in users who are used to the “static” type of participation in software development that is characteristic of proprietary software: basically they don’t have any participation. While they have migrated their skills from one OS to another, their mindset and behavior still remain in the former OS.
Hi Celeste,
I think it is very necessary to do all the possible research for usability before an application hits the market. That being said, one way to find out what users want is to read the web forums from the distributions, where thousands of everyday users complain or commend the functionality of their software.
If you take an earnest look, you will find gems of usability feedback, such as “I wish this would be this or that way”. Unfortunately, most developers often times do not have the social skills (do we call it patience?) to deal with a simple user, so the distributions filled that gap. But if the developer wants (or needs) to get in touch with the user, web forums would probably be the way to go.
Cheers
Brayden: I think the developer-centric focus of free software is one of its crushing failures. The idea that “i made this, so my input is paramount” works to an extent, but so long as that remains the design philosophy of free software, especially large free software projects, then free software will remain insular and not accepted by a wider audience. Maybe this is not what most developers want, but I do! Nuts to geeks; world domination is the goal. Mark Shuttleworth would agree, I think. And so, usability is paramount: the vast majority of users want an intuitive user experience more than anything else, certainly way before the swiss-army versatility of most linux distributions.
One of the great strengths of free software is that it CAN provide this with not much sacrifice. Unlike proprietary software, concerned with protecting trade secrets and the upcoming marketing reveals, free software thrives on openness and exchange of ideas. There is therefore no reason why users can’t be folded into the development process - and the more users are able to feed back into what free software products should do for them, the better that software will become. This does not have to be restricted just to code contributions; that’s a very narrow way of looking at contributions. My mom can’t write a single line of code, but she can certainly teach me a lot about what makes an application usable.
Sorry for misspelling your name Braydon.