Public participation in proprietary software development through user roles and discourse

The opportunity for users to participate in design and development processes has expanded in recent years through such communication and information technologies as mailing lists, bug trackers, usage monitoring, rich interactions between users and service-center staff, remote usability testing, and so on. A key question, therefore, is deciding how to engage users in design and development through such technologies. This paper addresses this question by reviewing literature on end-user programming and open source development to develop a framework concerning user roles and discourse. The framework makes two claims: (1) user roles and a social structure emerge after the introduction of a software application (role differentiation); and (2) different roles demand different kinds of discourse for deciding what to do and for reflecting upon intended and unintended consequences (role discourse demands). To show its application, the framework is used to analyze the development of del.icio.us, a breakthrough application for social bookmarking. This development process is notable because it is a characteristic of open source software development in some respects, but the code is not made available publicly. This hybridization appears to be widely applicable and suggests how design and development processes can be structured as a service where the design and development of the system proceeds simultaneously with the formation and nurturing of a community of users.