Which open source project to choose for an usability evaluation?

Question

For an university project on usability I'm looking for an open source project that is useful but hardly usable. My group would do a complete usability review and give recommendations over a period of approximately 3 months.

Of course this is no purely altruistic idea and the best-case-scenario would be: Our recommendations get implemented thus we can include an review of the improved version in our paper.

• Are such one-shot usability reviews useful for (and wanted by) the average developer or are they just "better than nothing".

• Do you know (actively developed) projects with poor usability that we could contribute to?

• Besides sourceforge's "Help Wanted" and openusability.org do you know where to turn to?

Regards,
FGK

Update:
We are looking primarily for an end-user application because we want to include things like hallway testing with potential users. (Thanks to Pekka Gaiser for raising the question)

2nd update: accepted answer:
Thank you all for your help.
I think we'll go for libpurple and its graphical incarnations.
The Linux and Windows versions of pidgin are truly a mess... :-)

Answer 1

Usability reviews are ALWAYS useful, as well as being better than nothing.

Do I know actively developed open source projects with poor usability? can fish be shot in a barrel? :D look at the big projects. there's always lots of controversy about them (especially their versions for osx, since osx users tend to have a higher standard). I'd suggest gimp as the prodigal one, but I hear they're making great strides there. or maybe pidgin? I use the os x version (Adium) and the windows one and the contrast is brutal.

that said, the big projects probably won't really care about your input. some of the devs might pay attention, but as a whole, you probably wont steer that titanic unless they've already been spending a lot of time talking about this.

my advice? go on an ubuntu forum and ask the users there what they hate the most about their software. that'll give you good feedback because ubuntu is heavily used, which generally means there's going to be a conversation about this.

either way, if you want to see your recommendations implemented, you'll have to open up a dialog with the devs. you'll need at least one that believes in your cause to implement your thoughts (it may not be merged into the main trunk, but it'll at least be implemented in his branch)

good luck!

Answer 2

Instead of choosing to help a project that is already bad, why not look at something heavily used?

There are many web based applications that may (or may not) benefit from a usability review - I'm thinking of things like Wordpress (in fact that's pretty much what I'm thinking of purely because I use it a lot).

It would be interesting to see what a group of "experts" think about Wordpress and how they would improve the UI - purely because any improvements made have the potential of helping/improving the experience for vast numbers of people.

Whether or not the Wordpress team specifically would implement any of your suggestions or changes is an unknown but even having a discussion and recommendations is most likely beneficial to the community.

Perhaps take a selection of projects (again I'm thinking web based because web usability is more defined [in my mind] - CMS/Blogging Software: Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress? Or E-Commerce applications? Forums?

Send out some "feeler" messages to the projects mailing lists to try and get an idea of whether or not they'd be open to the idea of help. I can't imagine many projects would be against the idea? Actually implementing changes may well be more difficult.

If you don't want to look at web applications maybe look at some of the "media" apps. Boxee or XBMC generally or Miro.

None of the projects I've mentioned are neccesarily bad (usability wise) but they're things I'm interested in so, from a slightly selfish point of view, it'd be beneficial to me (and I think a chunk of others) if you looked at something with a large user base.

Anyway, good luck.

Answer 3

How about Pidgin? It's a relatively popular open source project (I use it all the time) that is fraught with (in my opinion anyway) lots of usability mistakes, both minor and significant.

Answer 4

I have no idea whether they'd accept your input, but I think it would be interesting to compare KDE version 3 and 4. As a developer, I find version 4 all but unusable (and am switching to Gnome as a result). However, for the vast majority of users, their "award-winning" changes may have been an actual improvement.

Answer 5

If you want to see your changes implemented, be really sure to approach only projects with a high activity rate and people prepared to invest some serious time - you will need very motivated developers if you want to see (possibly fundamental) changes implemented. No matter which project you choose, be prepared for a lot of sometimes tooth-grinding work.

When thinking about web apps, Wordpress comes to mind. The back-end is crap (even though a lot of effort is being put in it), I hear people everywhere complaining about it. It is a very big name which is good for you and the probability to see suggestions actually implemented.

Answer 6

I recommend RIDE -- and IDE for developing robot framework tests. This tool is fairly young and has many classic mistakes, a few good features, and some good ideas with weak implementations. I think it would make an excellent candidate for a usability review.

I make this suggestion not because I want to point out the flaws in RIDE (after all, I'm a developer on that project so it might show off some of my flaws), but because I think a) it has the potential to help improve the product, and b) I think the tool makes some common mistakes you and your group could learn from.

It also has the advantage of being cross platform, so it should be suitable no matter what platform you're interested in.

Answer 7

I would suggest the GIMP - it's a very functional photoshop alternative, but it's not without its confusions...

Answer 8

Please, please, choose Audacity! That UI could be improved so much it's not funny...