The most crucial requirement to scientific software is output correctness. Large amounts of development resources are necessary to achieve this goal, leading aspects like interface design, usability and user experience to be put in second place. Ironically, not paying attention to user-friendliness creates the monster that we swore to defeat: an error-prone system. A user that suffers from cognitive overload, confusion or being irritated due to bad software design is more likely to make careless mistakes or to misuse the system.
During this BoF session, we invite you to discuss the role of usability and user experience in astronomical software. We will point out aspects that affect the user-friendliness of a system in a positive or negative way, and review our current software portfolio regarding these aspects. Furthermore, we will speak about how to address usability and user experience in our development procedures to ensure future software pieces for astronomers to be user-friendly.