PhIxDA Automagically

In preparation for the latest PHIxDA meeting, I stumbled across an article on the Penn State blog about Open Source Software and the User Experience in Higher Education. I am less a designer than I am a programmer and my mindset is typically within the realm of code and syntax rather than how something looks and its usability. In fact, it wasn’t until incarnation of PHIxDA and my participation did these UX principles start make an impression on me.

The article makes the case that UX Designers and Developers tend to speak differently languages if they speak at all. The focus being specifically on Open Source Software (OSS) in academia. When the failure rate of OSS is at ~70% something is clearly wrong. With universities and colleges (and other academic institutions) using open source content management systems, learning management systems, etc. it’s very important that the usability of these applications is, well, usable! seldom is the case for a layperson.

Recently, I’ve even expressed a bit of programmer’s arrogance to this problem. At work, someone suggested that our customer use Moodle as their LMS. I had it installed and working in less than an hour. For others it took days. Sometimes I forget that maybe everyone isn’t as tech-savvy as I am. This was no exception. I am those open source developers. I would have created that same pile of crap that is Moodle. And I would get angry when someone couldn’t just figure it out. Instead of helping, I escaped for eggs and bacon at a diner. This article called me out.*

Now I’ve been wondering WHY Moodle is so difficult to install and use and its likely due to a lack of UX design research. All of the documentation in the world won’t help a layperson who has no tech background what-so-ever. It’s ironic that a learning system would be so unintuitive to use.

I don’t think I know what would make Moodle better, but I do realize that the UX point of view must be realized to create a successful application. And the narrow scope of the developer needs to broaden a bit. The open source world needs to welcome this element into the production process instead of pumping out more crappy “web 2.0″ junk.

So let’s compare the Readme files of WordPress and Moodle. Two completely different programs that supposedly have the same methodology driving their installation. They’re both web applications. They’re both based in PHP and require a bit of knowledge of that.

WordPress’s Readme:

1. Unzip the package in an empty directory. Should have already done that to get to this htm file. Probably Unnecessary.
2. Open up wp-config-sample.php with a text editor like WordPad or similar and fill in your database connection details. This requires to knowledge of database details, though reading through the file’s source code and comments, it’s pretty clear what to do.
3. Save the file as wp-config.php This seems like an extra unnecessary step, but no big deal really.
4. Upload everything. Ok.
5. Open /wp-admin/install.php in your browser. This should setup the tables needed for your blog. If there is an error, double check your wp-config.php file, and try again. If it fails again, please go to the support forums with as much data as you can gather. Ok, it failed, what data should I bring? Nevermind, I fixed it.
6. Note the password given to you. Password for what?
7. The install script should then send you to the login page. Sign in with the username admin and the password generated during the installation. You can then click on ‘Profile’ to change the password. Well, I guess that wasn’t so bad.

Moodle’s Readme:

For the impatient, here is a basic outline of the
installation process, which normally takes me only
a few minutes: Arrogant programmer mindset w/ disclaimer of how easy he thinks it is. who is me?

1) Move the Moodle files into your web directory. Okay.

2) Create a single database for Moodle to store all
it’s tables in (or choose an existing database). Uh, how do I make a database? WordPress did it for me!

3) Visit your Moodle site with a browser, you should
be taken to the install.php script, which will lead
you through creating a config.php file and then
setting up Moodle, creating an admin account etc. Lots of steps condensed into one misleading third step, okay.

4) Set up a cron task to call the file admin/cron.php
every five minutes or so. WTF is a cron task and why do I have to do it?

Wait… that’s it?

http://moodle.org/mod/cvsadmin/view.php?id=7134 <- no UX designers and it shows. Poor interface, difficult navigability.

http://wordpress.org/about/ <- no UX designers here, but they claim to have focused on user experience and I think that it shows in both the admin and user aspects of the application.

Surprising neither Readme has a requirements section. Instead both are prefaced with an informal greeting filled with niceties and disclaimers of their ease (in case you can’t figure it out).

The bottom line is that developers in the open source world tend to care more about their coding capabilities and less about the end user (both administrator and common user). The product is a mess of unintuitive non-sense that ultimately ends up in the Recycling Bin (Trash Can for Mac users).

*The person having trouble was in IT. I guess I expected a certain level of expertise with server configurations, software installation, etc.