I was writing a bit about how designers might want to start being involved in open source projects. A part of getting involved is – potentially – also getting not-so-constructive feedback or outright rejections.
I would like to hear from others how their less-than-ideal interactions went and if there are any patterns. Ideally, we could find some constructive responses, but even just collecting some experiences can be helpful!
Here are some responses that I repeatedly saw or were confronted with. In general, there is no obligation to respond to unconstructive comments and it can make sense to just focus on responses that are constructive instead.
Aesthetics:
Initial post: A design suggestion that concerns how something looks
Response: »Your input is about looking good/being trendy/making it pretty but we care about productivity/features/actual change.«
Comment: Assumes that the latter is better and preferred (you vs. group “we”) and that one can have only one.
Possible reactions: Aesthetics and functionality are not either-or – opposing them does not make sense.
Defaults:
Initial posts: Suggesting a default configuration or default selection.
Response: »This project cares about user choice. It is not up us to decide for them«
Comment: The response seems to be more about not having someone else make a suggestion more about than a user being in control of what is going on. The differences to all the other decisions that are already made and which are not a threat is that this one is now noticeable since it is new and not introduced as some technological side effect.
Possible reactions: “This would make it easy for the ones that like the default, the others can easily change it – instead of burdening everyone” might help sometimes.
Ideosyncracies
Initial post: Often a suggestion that is seen by the designer als »cleaning up«, organizing features more meaningfully or – on the code side of things – offering an API instead of monkey-patching code.
Response: [The description of a workflow in which the current state of things is seen as helpful and relying on something that would be removed in this form]. Sometimes angry shouting.
Comments: Aside of it often being mixed with agression and extreme phrases (“forever”, “totally”…) pretty understandable – »intuitive equals familiar« also applies here and relearning is not fun.
Possible reactions: If the response is at least somewhat constructive, try to learn more about what they try to do – maybe you learn something that helps to improve the next iteration. Do post xkcd 1172 only if people are agressively unconstructive (since it is agressively unconstructive to do so)
I am repeatedly in two situations. Luckily mostly with new or fly-by contributors and rarely with core contributors in Forgejo, but still very annoying.
I invest a lot of time in user research, and finally conclude that “a lot of users run into a certain problem”.
Someone says “I disagree”, claiming that users behave differently, or that “most do x” etc
I don’t know if they did invest the same effort as I did, but since I’m the only one in the user research team, I suppose they did not.
The second situation and somewhat related to defaults is that I want to avoid unnecessary config options. A recent example is in this issue thread.
Basically my argument is that adding a setting has a cost, and should be justified with evidence that this is actually needed. But a lot of users seem to think that they have a “right” to a setting, and that adding a config (even if it’s not enabled by default etc) for their specific use case is always a good thing. But to me, good design also doesn’t involve adding an overwhelming amount of settings for every niche that someone might have stumbled across.
My more visual design oriented perspective on that topic is that we are facing an essential structural problem: Design contributions don’t even get rejected, they often outright fail as a concept.
Rejection assumes an authority capable to accept, which often is absent in projects. Very present though, are opinions voiced in any shape or form, lots of them. But not authoritative, neither skill wise (design background) nor project wide (official decision making). So contributing means navigating a rough see with no clear sight and no guidance, risking to sink any moment. Neither an inviting nor pleasant environment to spend your time and effort.
A well-founded rejection would be a step forward!
Design as a concept often fails by running against the brick wall of unprepared projects, that don’t anticipate contributions requiring creative workflows, and the kind of decision making that would be needed.