Monthly Open Source Design call

Open Source Design meta Monthly call
157

Notes from the community call on the 5th of October 2022

  • Intros & Core team explainer

  • Mars covered some of their recent work, design jams etc.

  • Nimisha asked the question of: ‘How can we involve developers in the design process more’ or ‘how to make design more accessible to devs’

    • @jdittrich Jan D mentioned about bringing developers into a design process
    • @ei8fdb Bernard also mentioned about developers coming along to observe user testing but not to be involved and have a debrief
    • @MarsBarLee Mars spoke about some of the accessible ways that devs
    • Ngoc talked about opening up their design process and being involved in the dev team circle by doing that they learn about the process and the gaps where design can help out.
    • Nimisha talked about the design docs not being used much, they look around in the same software to see how e.g. buttons look and then execute visuals from that

Some more comments from the chat include:

  • I like that it pushed one to think about process and what-you-can-show. It is very easy in a text to hide behind a big (design) word.
  • Designers can also be proactive about how we’d like to work with developers. Understanding their routines and ask to be part of their sprint/review circle/ etc as observers can be very helpful
  • In case you want an overview of non empirical methods (and how well they work compared to empirical methods as far as it is measurable): Rule based evaluation methods on Jan D.’s blog
  • These books might be of interest for you when trying to get developers interested/willing to sketch:(you’re probably familiar with these): Sketching the user experience
    understanding comics I used these books to help me when sketching. (I came from an engineering background and the idea of sketching was alien to me - I’m not an artist, sketcher) An important thing is to get across to them that sketching isn’t (necessairly) about art, etc.
  • getting developers involved also in design takes time. It’s hard.
  • Thread on Devs in UX in this Discourse (however, this is more high level focussed on user needs rather than on e.g. usability testing /jd)
  • I was wondering how if it can be made less intimidating/vague for devs, so all the advice that was shared makes sense

Please support fellow community member who spoke at a twitter spaces

JanD mentioned some news/backlash about Penpot’s VC funding for their OSS Design tool. Lots of traditional OSS arguments about funding + control in OSS. Penpot’s unique feature is that it’s OSS regardless of funding. Designers also needs to be paid which was important to recognise.

FOSDEM 2023

AP: Need to apply for a devroom before Oct 18th!
AP: Need to decide on 1 day and in person or hybrid - Bernard is asking questions on the matrix chat
AP: Write a post/thread about the different ways to get involved (organising in person/online, speaking, UX clinic-ing) to help people who have not done this before

See y’all next month! :wave:

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