Open Source Usability and the Open Source User Experience (OS-UX) provide a potentially powerful combination of technology and communications practices, combining different aspects of openness in one integrated package.
The Open Source Software movement is about open code and open technology. But simply making sure that tools or underlying code is easily available at no cost is no guarantee that the underlying goal of openness has been met. There is still a serious last-mile problem: If end users cannot manage to successfully use open source software, then the technology in practice remains closed.
There are many ways, both willful and unwitting, to close an open system. For example, have you tried reading the United States tax code lately? Factors such as complexity, crypticism, jargon, obscurity, quantity, and visual clutter can all contribute to the de facto closing of open code. Left untended, these factors can quickly transform the commons into a gated community.
Open source usability and user experience design mean open for usage, open for understanding, and open for user enjoyment. And these aspects are open even for those users who don't have the time, capabilities, or inclination to delve into the underlying open source code. That's why the issue of open source usability is not just a technical problem; it's also a communications problem.
Here is the heart of the issue: For open source to become more widely adopted, the OSS community and the Usability and UX communities need to work together to achieve openness not only at the source but also downstream.
