When I started working on my usability study project with KServe, I interacted with KServe users to understand the challenges they were experiencing while using the platform. During these conversations, users frequently mentioned GitHub issues and the problems they encountered during development and deployment.
This led me to explore how engineers solve problems by using GitHub repositories and collaborating in open-source communities. As part of my research, I started reading articles and academic research papers online, and I came to know this is the best approach and many organizations are already following this methods to identify the developer problems.
GitHub mining (also called repository mining, issue mining, or software repository mining) is increasingly used as a user research and UX research method in open-source ecosystems because it allows researchers to understand user challenges from real-world interactions rather than only interviews or surveys.
Here is the research paper links: 1. Mining Developer Behavior Across GitHub and Stack Overflow (Xiong et al., 2017)., 2. Understanding Java Usability by Mining GitHub Repositories (Lemay, 2018), 3. Insights from GitHub Community on the Matter Standard: Developer Perspectives and Challenges (Hassan, 2026).
