Open Source Community Growth as a User Experience Problem

Date:2012-07-18
Speaker:Asheesh Laroia, Karen Rustad
Slides:http://cdn.oreillystatic.com/en/assets/1/event/80/Open%20source%20community%20growth%20as%20a%20user%20experience%20problem%20Presentation.pdf

Open Hatch

Improving User Experience

  • Foster and encourage volunteer enthusiasm
  • Create clear, welcoming entry points
  • “User” in this context: contributor
  • Know for whom you’re designing!
  • Know the “workflow” for newcomers (shopping cart metaphor)
  • It’s like conversions in e-commerce, but for code users
  • See: “funnel effect”

Goal

Get more people down the funnel

Solutions

  • Get more people (hard)
  • Remove steps (aka remove friction)
    • Research why a step eliminates lots of people
  • Or make steps easier/faster/more informative
  • Where in the process would you give up!

Encourage People To Edit

  • Identify tasks to work on!
  • Publish a wishlist/TODO list
  • Make it very clear how to get started, setup, install
    • Test your docs!
    • Get people to follow the docs to install

Case Studies

nano

The text editor (that replaced pico)

  • For patch docs: “send ‘it’ to the nano address”
    • Send what exactly? The patch?

GNOME

GNOME Love project

  • “Get involved” link: Good
  • Index page: too much detail, confusing/overwhelming
  • Get involved steps are in the wrong order

LibreOffice

Easy Hacks project

  • “Developer” and “Contribute” links: Good (both link to same page)
  • Build step is optional and last resort: Good
  • List skills required for each step: Good
  • List of “easy” hacks for suggested fixes: Good

UX Cookbook of Strategies

Fedora Design Bounties

  • “One-click shopping” for OSS contributors
  • Quarterly blog post announcing winner w/ prize
  • Winner gets committer perms
  • Specific tasks: reward is LOVE

Open Hatch Training Missions

  • Cross-project skill checks
  • Automated training sessions
  • Learning without embarrassment
  • Clear progress tracking, improved feedback

Gentoo GSoC Tracking

  • Quantitative community mgmt
  • Interns check in regularly w/ mentors
  • Iterative tracking of the progress to a goal

Wikipedia Revert Message A/B Testing

  • Auto-detection of vandalism to pages
    • Discourages legit new/undeducated users
  • Rejection sans rejection
  • How to reject patches without crushing souls?
  • Rejection email links to “Talk” page

Summary

  • Better retention is possible
  • Diversity is key!
    • Consider accidental bias by high barriers to contribution
  • If you ask for specific help, you’ll probably get it!
    • Delegate to users (“You: fix this!”)
    • Wishlist/todo list is a Good Thing™.