Friday, July 5, 2002

Open Source Developers vs. Users There is a very interesting discussion going on about how the KDE project developers view users. A summary of the discussion can be read. I'm a huge fan of open source, but this really points out the major problem with open source software and end user applications. As long as the users are all developers everything is fine. Unfortunately, Linux is entering the world where all users are not also developers. Having software user interfaces developed by programmers just doesn't work. The motivations are completely wrong. This is verified by the number of posting from core KDE developers saying things to the effect of "I do this for fun, don't get paid and don't really care what users want". And you know what? They're absolutely right and this is why the idea of open source developed end user applications just won't succeed. The user or rather customer for the software must be the focus if the software is to be easy to use. The idea of adding feature X just because joe developer feels like writing it, leads to klunky, poorly designed and extremely difficult to use software. Developers are OK at designing tools for other developers. And this is where Open Source has been most successful. Infrastructure software, command line tools, compilers, OS kernels, networking tools. All of these things are aimed at highly technical users and this is where open source succeeds. Writing software for the average user is where the model breaks down, it just won't work. This isn't a criticism of the developers, it's simply a flaw in the Open Source development model. The reason for this? Programmers just don't have the necessary skills to design user interfaces and won't listen to the people who do because those people won't be geeks. I've seen this over and over as I've led development teams. I get so sick of developers using terms like lusers to describe the users of the software they wrote when they couldn't understand it. I've always believed that if a user can't understand the software then the problem most likely lies with the software. You wouldn't believe how many arguments I got into early in my career because of this. I have always deferred UI design to other people who I thought would be better at it then I was. Unfortunately far too often, in small companies at least, if you do that they'll hand it to a graphic artist. Sorry to say, they don't know how to design interfaces either At least they'll be pretty which is a lot more then I could have done. Anyway, I've never worked on a project where I felt the software was easy to use. It wasn't until I switched to Mac OS X and realized how much better things could be, that I even opened a book on UI design. And this is for a developer who has read hundreds, maybe even pushing a thousand books on computing topics in the last ten years. If I could read that many books, which I am quite certain is more then 95% of the developers around, and not touch a single UI design book then what are the chances of the average open source developers knowing a damn thing about UI design. I've now read about ten books and a large number of research papers on the subject and I still won't claim to know how to design a UI, but I sure as hell have gained a lot of respect for the people who can do it. Open source on the desktop just won't succeed until people who actually know how to design UIs start designing the apps. I believe the chances of that happening are somewhere between 0 and negative infinity. 11:54:33 PM