Participatory design in OSS development: interpretive case studies in company and community OSS development contexts

Abstract

This article examines distributed participatory design in open source software (OSS) development. User participation is becoming a relevant topic of research in the OSS development context. Though it has not been examined much to date, the OSS development context has been argued to advocate a particular type of participatory design, which can now be scrutinised in its natural setting as it evolves. Two interpretive case studies on user participation in OSS development are included in this article. The first examines a traditional community OSS development project; the second concentrates on the company OSS development context, the case being a software development unit of a global corporation involved in OSS development. Through analysis of the cases, different forms of participatory design (PD), especially of distributed PD, are identified. Distributed PD is interpreted to include gaining an understanding of users' current practices, redesigning them together with users and gathering feedback from users related to the solutions. Different kinds of roles are available to users, as well as to for intermediaries ‘representing users’. Especially, the importance of online forum-based and intermediary-driven PD is emphasised in this article. Implications for PD and OSS research and practice are considered.

Keywords:

• participatory design
• user participation
• open source software development
• distributed development
• interpretive case study

Acknowledgements

This research has been partly funded by the Academy of Finland.

Notes

1. Among other motivations, e.g. emancipation from large software companies, gaining reputation and career opportunities, learning, fun and altruism (see e.g. Bonaccorsi and Rossi 2006).

2. This study focuses on participatory design rather than on vaguely and diversely defined user-centred design (see e.g. Kujala 2003, Iivari and Iivari 2006), in which user participation is also an integral element, but which is defined from the viewpoint of the designer. Participatory design is based on the premise of cooperation between designers and users. This is evidently enabled and expected in OSS development, though many complexities are involved, because the distinction between designer and user is blurred and many users are not willing or able to adopt the co-designer role. Adopting the concept of user-centred design would require focusing on designers' actions (how they work with the users), while participatory design enables allowing agency for both parties.

3. There are a variety of intermediaries discussed in these studies: HCI specialists, local implementers, active users speaking on behalf of other users, communities of interest formed by representatives of divergent user groups, and developer-users taking part in both use and development communities mediating between them.