Expand open source reach

Reuters had interesting statistics to share with us earlier this morning: "complexity causes 50% of product returns". The article was mentioning a research from Elke den Ouden, from Netherland on consumer electronics.

The most interesting part of this study is the fact that a person will spend up to 20 minutes trying to understand how a device works before giving up. The other interesting part of the study is the reaction from product developers and product managers who found themselves quite astonished by the difficulties encountered by users with their devices.

This issue - I bet - could be witnessed not only in the consumer electronics world, but also in the software world. Indeed I have seen many people struggling with software - from Windows, to Word and Excel - and most didn't even have a choice to return those software (we are not employable today, if we don't know how to use Word and Excel).

This study concluded that better product definition is key to solving complexity. Some companies are great examples of what should be done to make software easier from Apple (Mac OSX, Ipod software, etc.) to 37signals (Basecamp, etc.). You'll notice that none of those two examples are providing Open Source software. Nonetheless, I believe that Open Source can help tremendously the software industry in simplifying software through the intense exchange between developers and users.

I believe that product complexity is a stigma of the lack of interaction between a technician / inventor and end-users. In many ways Open Source communities have this problem, since this is mostly developers who get involved in an Open Source project rather than end-users. But I hope that as Open Source software - with Linux (KDE), Firefox, Wordpress, SugarCRM opening the way - is reaching more and more non-technical users, those users will add their piece to Open Source software development by leaving valuable feedback in terms of usability. As result it will help Open Source developers improve users experience with software rather than add endlessly cool features - and hopefully provide better and more usable software than closed source software.

And to give a bit more substance to that idea, you should take a look at Neil McAllister excellent article: "Community development breathes new life into old gadgets" in Infoworld. Open Source helping software and gadgets become simpler, it is already happening.