**6. Lessons learned**

plug-in), (ii) expert users regard ERMaster is being a tool that is easy to learn, easy to use and easy to understand and had no trouble remembering how to use it, (iii) ERMaster is designed ergonomically using menus, action bars and easy access icons, but some users requested the addition of options of interest (for example, export DBs to Excel), and (iv) users consider the

template editing, edit tracing, etc.)

83% of users consider it is an easy to use tool, once it is installed. However, they consider that only expert users or those with an advanced level of average knowledge could easily install the tool due to the need of installing first Java and then Eclipse. Certain novel users complain about not having access to this tool due to the difficulty of installing it.

All users consider ERMaster's interface is easy to remember even through

Menus, action bars and icons are easily accessible, but some users asked for the addition of an extra 10% of options of interest (for example,

some time may have passed since they last used it.

The usability techniques have been created for another type of software developments, i.e. they have not been conceived with the specific characteristics of the OSS development process in mind. For this reason, it is necessary to adapt these techniques. These adaptations are based on the adverse conditions these techniques present. Some adverse conditions can be overcome using certain web artefacts (for instance, wikis, forums, blogs, etc.), which are known by the OSS community. As a result, many of these adaptations will be familiar to the members of this community, which favours to a certain extent the application of these usability techniques.

The adaptations of the focus groups technique are mainly two. Firstly, users participate online though a web artefact: a forum. Secondly, the usability expert is replaced by a developer, an experienced user or an HCI student under supervision of a mentor. In our particular case, the

After applying the focus groups technique to the ERMaster project, we were able to confirm that it is very hard to get a representative set of users. We believe that the main reason for this is that users are unmotivated. We had to be persistent and use different communication mechanisms (for example, personal wikis and electronic mails) to get the consent of the principal developers (only one out of five principal developers responded). The biggest problem with applying the focus groups technique was user availability: most users are volunteers and had very little spare time. In fact, the participants did not have the time to enter their

ERMaster work environment to be adequate, as there are Help and Query tools.

In this section we discuss and answer the research question of this study.

**RQ: How to incorporate the focus groups technique in a real OSS project?**

expert was replaced by an HCI student under the supervision of a mentor.

**5. Discussion of results**

**Points to be considered Summary of results**

**Table 4.** Summary of the results obtained from the questionnaire.

13. What problems have you often come across as an ERMaster

14. Do you think that the ERMaster interface is easy to remember?

15. How do you think the ERMaster interface should be changed or

user?

56 Trends in E-learning

added to?

The lessons that we have learned from applying the focus groups technique in the OSS project are as follows:


• OSS projects that want to apply the steps to incorporate techniques and need to find an expert in HCI or an HCI student guided by an expert mentor can do so by publishing advertisements in the webpage, forum, wiki and blogs of the project. Furthermore, the administrator of the OSS project can get in touch with universities to encourage expert usability students to collaborate in the application of techniques to improve the usability of an OSS application.

the working philosophy of the OSS community where anyone who wants to is welcome to participate. In sum, our proposed adaptation does not place any constraints on the number of technique participants. This adaptation is a response to the OSS community working philoso-

Applying a Usability Technique in the Open Source Software Development Process: Experiences…

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.74862

59

The focus groups technique is useful for gathering opinions and suggestions from participant users for the product concept development activity and its results are descriptive. After analysing and applying the focus groups usability technique in requirements engineering activities in OSS developments, we found that there are adverse conditions that are an obstacle to its application like, for example, the shortage of OSS users interested in applying the technique, community geographical and temporal distribution and OSS community motivation.

We believe that, in order to improve the integration of usability techniques in OSS projects, the OSS community has to start attaching importance to and raising awareness about the repercussions that the issues addressed by the HCI field have on software development. Additionally, as HCI techniques need to be adapted to overcome the adverse conditions for adoption in OSS development projects, the OSS community also has to broaden its view of software development in order to consider usability and not focus exclusively on feature development. In the future, we aim to conduct further case studies to adapt and apply other usability techniques in OSS projects. We will analyse other web artefacts that can be adapted to improve communication in OSS communities (e.g., social networks) and gradually raise the awareness of OSS developers about the benefits of applying HCI usability techniques.

This research was funded by the SENESCYT-Ecuador, and Quevedo State Technical University. Also this research was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports FLEXOR (TIN2014-52129-R) and TIN2014-60490-P projects and the eMadrid-CM project (S2013/ICE-2715). Finally, this research received funding from the "DIUDA 22316 Project" of

, Mayra Llerena<sup>2</sup>

1 Department of Computer Engineering, Autonomous University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain

2 Department of Education Didactics, Autonomous University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain

3 Department of Computer Engineering and Computer Science, University of Atacama,

, John W. Castro<sup>3</sup>

and Silvia T. Acuña<sup>1</sup>

**Acknowledgements**

the University of Atacama.

\*, Nancy Rodriguez<sup>1</sup>

\*Address all correspondence to: lllerena@uteq.edu.ec

**Author details**

Lucrecia Llerena<sup>1</sup>

Copiapó, Chile

phy rather than to an adverse condition posing an obstacle to technique application.

