A few colleagues have pointed me to the article by movie director-sounding blogger Matthew Paul Thomas entitled “Why Free Software Has Poor Usability, and How to Improve It.”

I’ve given you the link to the original Thomas article, but I’m more interested in discussing Johnathan Gruber’s take on it. Says Gruber in this post:

I posit that the usability and elegance of any product, software or hardware, tends to reach and seldom surpasses the level that satisfies the taste of whoever is in charge of the product. This applies universally, not just to free and open source software. For example, it explains why Microsoft produces such crummy software even though the company employees [sic] thousands of talented programmers and even designers — Microsoft’s decision makers have no taste. But the problem is endemic to open source.

The people in charge of most free and open source software products tend to have poor taste in user interfaces; people with good taste in user interface design are seldom in charge of open source software projects.

Put another way, if you have to ask for better design, you will lose. You need to be in a position to demand it.

Yes. (Adding some more later in the day…) Aside from the comment about Microsoft’s decision makers having “no taste” - undoubtedly a reference to Steve Job’s comment about Microsoft - I have personally seen what can happen when leaders demand better design…and what can happen when they don’t.

Design leadership *has* to come from the top. It can’t be, as Cooper said in February at IxDA 2008 - an “insurgency” driven from below.

Matthew Paul Thomas :: Why Free Software Has Poor Usability, and How to Improve It

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 5th, 2008 at 1:39 pm and is filed under Guru Alert!, Open Source, Usability. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.