Success stories and processes: Questions for Projects

Design Lounge
1

I would be curious how open source projects create their UIs, told along some example of an addition of a feature or a reorganization of the interface.

Aside on concrete projects

Both commercial and open source projects like to talk about principes and ideal approaches. The division of programming and interface design as well as the focus on abstract concepts (UX) rather than artifacts (UI) has probably contributed to this. So what we learn is often divorced from practice.

I think it can be made concrete, though. The Audacity 4 video woud be a positive example for me; it explained the different UI plans, how they build upon each other and their connection to the code (there were a lot!).

I wonder if we could reach out to some projects and ask them about changes they did (or plan to do) and how they go about it. Maybe we could create a series of blogposts with them.

This could be structured along a catalogue of questions:

  • What was the interface and usage of it before the change?
  • What led you to wanting to change the user interface? What were the problems?
  • Did you have an idea (detailed, rough and/or very vague!) what the change would result in?
  • What was the process so far of making a change happen? What was easy, what was hard and what was suprising?
  • What is the result?
1 Like
2

In my experience, the main reason UX designers struggle to gain traction in open-source projects is that maintainers simply don’t understand how to collaborate with them. This is a deeply entrenched, difficult problem that isn’t simple to fix.

However, your suggestion to create a series of Audacity-like videos feels like an excellent idea as it creates a “catalog of successes” that can serve as an inspiration for maintainers. We need to celebrate more UX success in this space and collecting them together is a great way to raise awareness.

3

Yes. I think that such cases can help both developers and designers to collaborate and see a good reason to do so!

I think, it is often unclear to developers how much a good design can improve the application and make their work easier. And, spreaking at least from my own experience, I used to be dismissive of developer’s concerns that some design ideas making the code hard to maintain for an unclear gain.

I won’t solve all “how to collaborate” problems but it would provide some examples to think along for coders and designers alike