Search

Assessing User eXperience (UX) maturity is mandatory in the free and open-source software (FOSS) community to avoid wasting resources on projects that may fall short of expectations. Best practices suggest employing UX Capability Maturity Models (UXCMMs), which often specify an evolutionary plateau toward developing a UX-matured system and quantify organizational UX maturity into maturity levels ranging from no or ad hoc improvement to integrated continuous improvement. Numerous generically developed UXCMMs exist. However, none is created for the FOSS community, and less information is available to support their perfect match. Thus, raise suspicions if they have proper UX maturity influencing factors (UXMIFs) for the FOSS community or measure the right thing. The FOSS community differs from traditional software-developing communities and may have different dynamics and UXMIFs, necessitating unique and new methodologies for their discovery. This study, therefore, aims to identify the FOSS community's UXMIFs and evaluate the community's knowledge of UX maturity-related concepts. Its findings may help future researchers, practitioners, and other FOSS developers to develop UXCMMs exclusive to the FOSS community. The study's design is both qualitative and quantitative. It adopted a systematic literature review, interviews, fuzzy Delphi Method, and thematic analysis to collect and analyze data and present the findings. The study's sample included sixty-two active FOSS projects, fifteen FOSS stakeholders, and twelve UX experts. The outcome shows that 84% of UX experts agreed on the thirty-six FOSS's UXMIFs with threshold d = 0.143 and crisp values greater than α-cut = 0.5. User feedback and adopted technologies were ranked first, while learnability and use speed were ranked last. Similarly, FOSS stakeholders have shown a shared understanding of UX maturity, connected concepts, and impacting factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The popularity of User Experience (UX) is exponentially mounting because it predicts users' engagement through satisfying needs. It further determines product success, revenues augmentation, employee gratifications, user errors, and vital supports. However, contemporary UX Capability Maturity Models (UXCMMs) do not adequately address Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) UX, a substantiated root of adoption misfortune. Improving UX may result from a precise appraisal of the as-is organisational status. Although Software Engineering endorses CMMI, ISO 15504/ISO/IECTS 33061 and UXCMMs for this judgement, none has processes for evaluating FOSSs' UX. Moreover, the FOSS community has neither theories nor hypotheses to map UXCMMs' formulation processes. It knows very little regarding their practical applicability, which leaves functional relevance uncertainties. In retorting to present uncertainties, this study accomplished the Systematic Literature Review and encountered eight pertinent articles. They show that most UXCMMs originated from recognised models. Moreover, neither developed nor validated experimentally, used similar methodologies with patched documents and are not exclusive for the FOSS community. They neither handle challenges properly nor reflect earlier studies' endorsements. The study's contributions to discovered gaps include proposing additional research areas and a FOSS-specific UXCMMs development checklist to identify UX metrics and standardise UXCMMs' development processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Preparing to achieve higher levels of UX maturity of desktop-based FOSS projectsis imperative for the projects' success. • The FOSS community has limited studies,techniques, and analytical lenses forassessing its preparation for projects achieving higher levels of UX maturity. • The Current preparation interventions are not consistently applied across projects and lack methodological rigor. • This study adopted the fuzzy delphi method to create and rank ten (10) lenses to determine the preparation of the desktop-based FOSS projects to achieve higher levels of UX maturity. • Recommendations and suggestions for future studies derived from the results are presented. User eXperience (UX) significantly influences the success of free and open source software (FOSS) projects and is measured using UX capability maturity models (UXCMMs). Every organization desires higher levels of UX maturity; however, it requires upfront preparations and process quality control. Harmonizing processes and analytical lenses for determining preparation for UX maturity are still challenging, and studies to create them are limited. The analysis is ad hoc and based on the actors' will and experiences. This study proposes and validates analytical lenses. Findings show that UX experts agreed that the lenses could be used with a consensus percentage of 81 %, the threshold value (d) = 0.112, and crisp values greater than α-cut = 0.5. On validation, 47.57 % of stakeholders agreed, and 52.43 % strongly agreed they were relevant. Results help evaluate the status quo and change culture and policies toward ideal preparation. Two areas are suggested for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]