Designing for discovery: opening the hood for open-source end user tinkering

According to the Free Software Movement, the user ought to have "the freedoms to make changes, and to publish improved versions" and "to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs" [7]. The Open Source Initiative expects users to access source code, explaining that "you can't evolve programs without modifying them. Since our purpose is to make evolution easy, we require that modification be made easy" [8]. These philosophies can shape a unique perspective on software usability that has not been addressed thoroughly in the open-source domain. That is: how to design user-interfaces and tools that facilitate access to source code and encourage the behaviors envisioned above, namely, to improve the code, to personalize it, to learn from it, and to share it. And, as the Open Source Initiative recommends, to make this easy. In addition to presenting this research perspective, we suggest some fruitful approaches to answering these questions and...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: CHI
• Authors: Gifford Cheung, Parmit Chilana, Shaun K. Kane, Braden Pellett
• Keywords: CHI 2009, DUB Group University, Human Computer Interaction, Information School DUB, School DUB Group