‘Configuring the User and the Designer’ – A Critical Inquiry on Usability Work in the Company Open Source Software Development Context

Abstract

This paper examines the complex interplay between Human Computer Interaction (HCI), open source software (OSS) and commercial mobile application development practices through a case study on usability work in company OSS development setting. The case company started using OSS in their products few years ago. There are usability specialists ‘representing the user’ in the development. The paper examines how the emergence of OSS affected the design process and outcome in the case. Specific focus will be on how the emergence of OSS contributed to the dynamics involved with ‘configuring the user’ and ‘configuring the designer’. The results show that usability specialists and developers collaboratively ‘configured the user’, but the emergence of OSS allowed users to participate earlier and have an increased prominence. Emphasis on users and usability as well as OSS ideology, on the other hand, in part ‘configured the designers’. However, non-computer-savvy users remained neglected.