people good at UX don’t seem to care as much about FOSS and the open web
I’m not sure this is true - at least I have an alternative explanation.
People who do the UX design and all that are rarely invited into the process. Open source projects often look for “maintainers” but this almost exclusively means “developers”.
There’s documentation and contributing guidelines for developers. Where is the same material for product managers or designers?
We don’t get product managers and designers in FOSS because they’ve never been invited.
What do you mean by “invite”? What would that look like?
My perspective of designers and product managers is that they like to own projects. FOSS generally works based on merit, where you first contribute and members of the project decide whether to accept it.
For developers this is easy:
Contribute code
Code is accepted or rejected
That’s how it should work for design as well. Contribute some designs that you think will improve the UX and if they’re desirable, someone will take up implementing them. If it’s easy (e.g. a new logo), it’ll get done right away, and if it’s more involved, it’ll get done as devs get time.
Project management is trickier because that requires buy-in from the devs. To get there, you need go earn their trust:
help triage bugs (propose a severity system if there isn’t one)
help organize a roadmap
do some leg work marketing whatever the project needs (go find designers if needed).
If you do a good job, they’ll let you do the above more autonomously. But they’re not just going to hand over decision-making to a rando off the street, especially since “they” can change day to day.
Developers don’t like being told what to do (esp since it’s usually a hobby), but they do want the project to be more successful. Designers and product managers are certainly welcome, but the onus is on any contributor to demonstrate the value they bring.
What do you mean by “invite”? What would that look like?
I don’t mean a literal invite - I mean that projects are rarely inviting for product managers and designer (let’s call them “UX people”) and rarely do they encourage those people to contribute.
Let’s take a look at Lemmy as an example (and please don’t misunderstand, this is not to bash Lemmy specifically, this happens for so many FOSS projects). Let’s put ourselves in the shoes of a UX person who wants to contribute to Lemmy. How would I (the imaginary UX person) do that?
Well, on join-lemmy.org there’s not really any links to anything to do with contributing but there is a link to “GitHub” in the contact information. As a UX person, I may have a vague idea what git and GitHub is, but obviously that’s not a tool that I use. So then I land on the git repository on GitHub. Oh great, there’s a “Contributing” section! It says:
Read the following documentation to setup the development environment and start coding
Oh. So that’s contributing code and stuff. So that’s not me. But okay since there’s nothing else, let’s try and go to the contributing guidelines anyway. But this just gives a technical overview of the different software components of Lemmy, and then goes into how to setup local development. This is all mumbo-jumbo to me, I know nothing about coding, I am a UX person.
My point is (and again, Lemmy is just an example here), none of these contributing guidelines are helpful unless you are a developer, and the fact that the contributing guidelines only caters to developers makes any UX person feel out of place, as if their expertise is not wanted or needed. This is what I mean when I say it is not very inviting to UX people. It is very inviting to developers though.
That’s how it should work for design as well. Contribute some designs that you think will improve the UX and if they’re desirable, someone will take up implementing them. If it’s easy (e.g. a new logo), it’ll get done right away, and if it’s more involved, it’ll get done as devs get time.
I agree! But how are designers supposed to know where to even start? There are “good first issues”, but those are also only for developers. Where’s the contributing guidelines for non-developers? You say “Designers and product managers are certainly welcome”, but this doesn’t look that welcoming to me!
My perspective of designers and product managers is that they like to own projects.
I think this is a bit of a mischaracterization. I don’t think a product manager has to “own” the project to help and be valuable to a project.
You make an excellent point, and I’ve never thought about it this way before.
Devs are not newbie friendly at all. We were all noobs at some point and (if we’re being honest) remember the excruciating pain it took to become versed. Most people are not going to go through this, so FOSS naturally loses a lot of non-tech talent (including UX).
What I didn’t think about is that there really isn’t a way for UX people to contribute at all. GitHub Issues, at most, allows for people to make feature-requests - but beyond that it’s just not viable.
For example, I am a UX designer and would like to contribute or iterate a layout. My demonstration includes several images and a video. First off, where do I do this? I could use GitHub Issues, but this is an extremely painful process that is likely far removed from my normal workflow. I could use YouTube, and then link on GitHub issues - but then I have to jump through several annoying hoops for a still sub-optimal workflow.
Git itself also has worked very poorly with binary files (png jpg mp3 wav…) until the recent advent of git-lfs. Binary iteration using base git is just a non-starter.
I am shocked to say it, but I cannot think of any development UI that is actually decent for non-tech people. If anyone does FOSS UX, and I am wrong about the tooling, please correct me.
Our designers use Figma and send us a link so we can see the various user flows, leave comments, etc. It’s not very FOSS-friendly though, but the workflow is pretty good.
Here are a few options that I think could work:
wiki - many projects use them for documentation, and you can easily upload images and videos, track revisions, etc; can also be used for project management
something self-hostable, like penpot - more UX-specific tools, but probably not what you’re familiar with
forum - similar features as GitHub issues!/discussions, but maybe less intimidating? Keeps GitHub focused on implementation details and less chatty
something else?
What infra do you expect to be there before you jump in? I’m working on a project I’d like to unveil hopefully this year that could really benefit from UX, so I’m genuinely interested in figuring this out.
I’m not sure this is true - at least I have an alternative explanation.
People who do the UX design and all that are rarely invited into the process. Open source projects often look for “maintainers” but this almost exclusively means “developers”.
There’s documentation and contributing guidelines for developers. Where is the same material for product managers or designers?
We don’t get product managers and designers in FOSS because they’ve never been invited.
What do you mean by “invite”? What would that look like?
My perspective of designers and product managers is that they like to own projects. FOSS generally works based on merit, where you first contribute and members of the project decide whether to accept it.
For developers this is easy:
That’s how it should work for design as well. Contribute some designs that you think will improve the UX and if they’re desirable, someone will take up implementing them. If it’s easy (e.g. a new logo), it’ll get done right away, and if it’s more involved, it’ll get done as devs get time.
Project management is trickier because that requires buy-in from the devs. To get there, you need go earn their trust:
If you do a good job, they’ll let you do the above more autonomously. But they’re not just going to hand over decision-making to a rando off the street, especially since “they” can change day to day.
Developers don’t like being told what to do (esp since it’s usually a hobby), but they do want the project to be more successful. Designers and product managers are certainly welcome, but the onus is on any contributor to demonstrate the value they bring.
I don’t mean a literal invite - I mean that projects are rarely inviting for product managers and designer (let’s call them “UX people”) and rarely do they encourage those people to contribute.
Let’s take a look at Lemmy as an example (and please don’t misunderstand, this is not to bash Lemmy specifically, this happens for so many FOSS projects). Let’s put ourselves in the shoes of a UX person who wants to contribute to Lemmy. How would I (the imaginary UX person) do that?
Well, on join-lemmy.org there’s not really any links to anything to do with contributing but there is a link to “GitHub” in the contact information. As a UX person, I may have a vague idea what git and GitHub is, but obviously that’s not a tool that I use. So then I land on the git repository on GitHub. Oh great, there’s a “Contributing” section! It says:
Oh. So that’s contributing code and stuff. So that’s not me. But okay since there’s nothing else, let’s try and go to the contributing guidelines anyway. But this just gives a technical overview of the different software components of Lemmy, and then goes into how to setup local development. This is all mumbo-jumbo to me, I know nothing about coding, I am a UX person.
My point is (and again, Lemmy is just an example here), none of these contributing guidelines are helpful unless you are a developer, and the fact that the contributing guidelines only caters to developers makes any UX person feel out of place, as if their expertise is not wanted or needed. This is what I mean when I say it is not very inviting to UX people. It is very inviting to developers though.
I agree! But how are designers supposed to know where to even start? There are “good first issues”, but those are also only for developers. Where’s the contributing guidelines for non-developers? You say “Designers and product managers are certainly welcome”, but this doesn’t look that welcoming to me!
I think this is a bit of a mischaracterization. I don’t think a product manager has to “own” the project to help and be valuable to a project.
One project that does this quite well is bevy. See this video from one of the product manager contributors to bevy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3PJaiSpbmc
You make an excellent point, and I’ve never thought about it this way before.
Devs are not newbie friendly at all. We were all noobs at some point and (if we’re being honest) remember the excruciating pain it took to become versed. Most people are not going to go through this, so FOSS naturally loses a lot of non-tech talent (including UX).
What I didn’t think about is that there really isn’t a way for UX people to contribute at all. GitHub Issues, at most, allows for people to make feature-requests - but beyond that it’s just not viable.
For example, I am a UX designer and would like to contribute or iterate a layout. My demonstration includes several images and a video. First off, where do I do this? I could use GitHub Issues, but this is an extremely painful process that is likely far removed from my normal workflow. I could use YouTube, and then link on GitHub issues - but then I have to jump through several annoying hoops for a still sub-optimal workflow.
Git itself also has worked very poorly with binary files (png jpg mp3 wav…) until the recent advent of git-lfs. Binary iteration using base git is just a non-starter.
I am shocked to say it, but I cannot think of any development UI that is actually decent for non-tech people. If anyone does FOSS UX, and I am wrong about the tooling, please correct me.
What’s your normal workflow?
Our designers use Figma and send us a link so we can see the various user flows, leave comments, etc. It’s not very FOSS-friendly though, but the workflow is pretty good.
Here are a few options that I think could work:
What infra do you expect to be there before you jump in? I’m working on a project I’d like to unveil hopefully this year that could really benefit from UX, so I’m genuinely interested in figuring this out.