There is far too much 'walking on eggshells" in #OpenSource, mostly because the power lies with the people that are the most easily offended. I've been clobbered for saying the "#UX of opensource isn't great". The advice is always the same:
* Go slow
* Don't rock the boat
* Make small changes
That is great advice, for a dysfunctional relationship. To be clear, I'm NOT saying be dictatorial! I'm saying we can't fix a system that doesn't want to be fixed.
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Good Design must at least start with the maintainers. Designers can't "PR our way" into a good design, pushing design into project that doesn't really want it.
I agree with the advice above! We can go slow. I'm just saying it has to be done JOINTLY. The maintainer/core team has to want UX *before* the PRs come rolling in.
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And before people start with the "but corp UX is bad too" defence, of course that's true (and also quite irrelevant).
Open source, in many cases, is trying to reach the entire world. We need to work on making the software approachable and useful to everyone.
There are TONS of UX designers that are here right now, wanting to help but are rebuffed and told "they are doing it wrong" so guess what? They leave.
If OpenSource really is understaffed, that's a curious way to treat willing hands.
One last point: I'm not saying ALL #OpenSource software has bad UX! There are lots of positive examples. I'm just saying that, as a culture, it has some maturing to do. The very old and very tired advice of "go slow and try a small PR" works great for engineering (and documentation). I'm just saying that doesn't work for UX, which requires a more coordinated, shared teamwork approach.
Most of open source applications have only one maintainer. So most of them don't have any UX expertise available.
For bigger projects, UX requires a strong unified vision of what the application is going to be. Getting to an agreement on technical issues is hard enough without throwing UX issues in. And forcing volunteers to commit their efforts into a UX they didn't agree with is a terrible idea. Which explains why projects where there are many paid people tend to have better UX.
Getting people to agree on an UX is hard enough in piramidal organizations with tight UX teams. Doing it on big democratic organizations, with many UX experts trying to get their vision catch on must be really, really hard.
Big projects usually have many paid people, so whatever is decided gets done.
When a project is all volunteers, there are tasks nobody wants to do and remain undone for years.
@jgg This is one of the biggest myths in #OpenSource, I discuss it in detail in my #FOSSBack talk last month.
Proper planning sends a strong signal that "this is important to us" and creates a motivation that is stronger than "scratch my own itch". I got this from talking to multiple projects (that don't have lots of paid workers) and it's how they signal to their community that important work needs to be done. It works.
@scottjenson @jgg congrats on the retirement and thanks for the talk, interesting!
Having a strong shared vision and a clear plan is what makes people to volunteer to go to war; I can only imagine what the limits must be for open source.
But it is something reeeeal hard to achieve. Usually, projects get there only for 'cloning my favourite closed source thing', because the goal can't be clearer.
Problem is, until you have a software project finished, it is real difficult to communicate how great it could be.
Even worse for fan films, of course, but...
@jgg ironically, #ux appears to be easier on bigger projects. It all boils down to how they manage their roadmap. This applies to much more than ux of course. Big projects coordinate (and motivate!) work on all sorts of hard topics like architecture, documentation, testing, etc. I've given a while talk on this at fossbackstage (and how smaller projects can do this as well) https://youtu.be/ZLmXlhJMQmM?si=YOrDzJMIHbfaOMQX