Improving OSD's Job Page

Open Source Design meta
#1

There’s been some work that was ‘sparked’ by this forum post: https://discourse.opensourcedesign.net/t/whats-up-with-job-postings/

and we briefly spoke about plans and ideas in March 2021’s monthly community call: Monthly Open Source Design call - #105 by Erioldoesdesign

So this is the new forum thread for…

Improving the Job’s page on opensourcedesign.net!

https://opensourcedesign.net/jobs

We have an open Figma design (we want to move to penpot.app ideally)

and we’re using this forum post as an ongoing ‘collecting info, ideas and community responses’ before we create a GitHub issue etc.

So, Open Source Design community, What do you think needs to be improved about the Job’s page?

:smiley:

#2

Starting off the discussion with some of the ideas from March 2021’s community call discussion:

Some ideas for the jobs page improvements:

  1. Many projects give emails or issue links/repos but plenty of designers still reply to forum threads wanting to contribute. We need a clear and single way for designers to start the job process and it needs to be super clear for the job poster that they need to engage in X way with designers.

  2. We could encourage a discourse forum post immediately after the job post PR is accepted to get better responses.

  3. Deadlines are really useful for our own admin purposes. Some job posts have them included but I think it’d be good to ask job posters for an idea of deadline.

  4. We could also be: Keep for X weeks or so. Does not need to be called deadline Or “Receiving submissions/applications until”.

  5. Categories for the jobs posting form and forum e.g. Logo, UI, UX, Research.

  6. Support to write your design needs via a call Scott Jenson suggested this.

  7. ‘I’m a designer that can do X,Y and Z. Contact me to ask for help’. Create a profile from scratch? do we help designers make a github profile.

  8. Could we pay someone to do some of what we want to happen across and the jobs page out of the OSD open collective funding pot?

  9. How will maintenance happen?

  10. Should we rename it from ‘Jobs’ to something else? Like ‘Contributions’, ‘Tasks’ or ‘Opportunities’?

  11. How can we push forward Kai 's showcase design for homepage?

  12. Do we want to collect or understand jobs through some kind of metrics? Either through an OSS metric tool or manually?

#3

Small point: is there a default title for postings? This is a shot from the jobs page just now. If so, just remove it to they have to type something a bit more descriptive?

Screen Shot 2021-03-04 at 3.53.45 PM
Screen Shot 2021-03-04 at 3.53.45 PM1190×1436 120 KB

1 Like
#4

These ideas are a great starting point.
I do however have some different concerns around this redesign:
Since I cannot fully understand the context, I am not sure that I can contribute something which is “on point.”

I would suggest defining a list of the users as well as problem statements.

Who are the main users?
What problems does this page solve for them?
What value does this page offer?

It would be interesting to define this to be reused in the actual jobs (challenges?) themselves.

There can be several advantages to this:

  1. It will help contributors align and know what to design for
  2. It will make design feedback clearer
  3. It will help newer members get acquainted with a more basic design process (a single but focused page seems perfect for this)
  4. Evaluation will also be easier later on

Let me know if you agree, and we can look at this more in-depth.

2 Likes
#5

Oh this was because these were all written by Belen at FOSDEM 21! they can certainly be changed via the .md files in PR’s

#6

Who are the main users?
What problems does this page solve for them?
What value does this page offer?

These are certainly worth investigating! go for it!

2 Likes
#7

I completely agree, in terms of streamlining contributions. I believe we can pick up pointers from the current home page and manifesto to inform decisions about the end users.

1 Like
#8

I just saw Scott’s reply on the other thread, where the discussion is around doing some research on the interested org’s side and defining their needs.
@scottjenson perhaps we could combine these?

1 Like
#9

Skipped my mind!

I assume Eriol and Scott will give an update when they’re able

2 Likes
#10

I’m planning on sprinting on some of this when I have a week ‘off’ of my day job on the 31st of March for a week.

I’ll look at:

  • Getting some more designs done
  • Some project management of tasks
  • comms and doc’ing on whats been discussed
  • try to get a synchronous meeting in the diary for those interested on certain parts of this project.
2 Likes
#11

Apologies, I’m happy to let Eriol take the lead here. I was more or less offering my services to run the calls, write up the notes (if that was helpful) Eriol, if you’d like some help during that week of 31 March, just let me know

3 Likes
#12

I was talking with @milapbhojak about improving the Jobs page this morning and he mentioned his thoughts around the fact that designers new to open source really could benefit from a more consistent mentoring relationship.

We chatted briefly about each job needing to have a designer assigned as a mentor so they can ‘shepherd the process’ from submission to contribution. I’m doing this with my job for the OFN: Jobs - Design contributors wanted

But what about job postings that don’t have designers on the team to look to to ‘shepherd?’