Designers, how do we get you guys to contribute to open source projects?

In the UK at least, get designers get paid a lot less.

The work they do get paid to do is restrictive and dull.

Designers are generally driven by the desire to create and make 'pretty' things.

Most spend all day in meetings discussing why that shade of pink isn't good for the 99th design iteration of the same icon.

So I highly doubt they would rush to do this kind of work for free.

Most design work open source projects need are quite 'boring' from some designers point of view.

Why should I contribute to an open source project when I can do something like design a simple killer wordpress theme that may gain major adoption and use that as reference for my work than a single open source project catered to a single developers open source work that may or may not get used heavily. That or is only used in parts. There are tons of free designs out there, how often have you or anyone you know hiring designers reference how awesome or widely adopted their one off icon kit has been or something similar? Not happening.

Here we come to a fundamental problem of FOSS economics. There are three forces which protect the software from the work of well-meaning but clueless people:

A) Physical reality. The software has to work. If I take an ax to the internals of Apache it will quickly become apparent that I screwed up when the web pages don't load. There are automated tests. There are well-defined criteria for performance: specs, stopwatches, size of memory footprint, number of crashes in N hours.

B) Community. Patches don't get accepted without buy-in. If you make a mistake that is bad enough you won't get enough other hackers to sign on to your patch. It will get debated to death until you make the community happy.

C) Governance. In any FOSS community, all contributors are equal in the eyes of the gods, but in practice some contributors are more equal than others. If everyone but Linus Torvalds likes your patch, your patch still might not make it into Linux.

How do these map to design?

A) One problem with design is that, almost by definition, it is the part of development that can't be done by a machine. You can't write automated tests. You probably can't even define "wrong" in any objective manner. Trying to do so will drive your designers straight up a wall:

http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html

So to answer the question "hey, did my nifty new color scheme screw up the design?" you really have no choice but to ask a design team member. But:

B) The problem with design is that it doesn't scale well; it depends on a consistent vision and a consistent sense of taste. It is very hard to get more than three people on the same page here, and that's if they are trying to cooperate; mix in a saboteur and you are in big trouble.

So the right size for a design team is small. Small, and select: You need to earn your way onto the team. Add more members, or more voluminous input from nonmembers, and the team quickly spends more time bickering than building; if half those members are volunteers who have no experience and haven't read the style guide you are doomed to perpetual gridlock.

The established way to break this logjam is:

C) from the top. What color is the Ubuntu default theme? Ultimately, it is what Mark Shuttleworth wants it to be. And Shuttleworth has some taste, thank god.

Unfortunately, very few project leaders have taste - not just in FOSS but anywhere; this is why every piece of gear I own is gradually being replaced by a box with a little Apple logo on it. And if you are one of the rare people with excellent taste and the ability to lead a big technical project you probably have much more lucrative things to do than FOSS. Unless you are an idealist and independently wealthy, like, ahem, Mark Shuttleworth. There are precious few such people. It's a problem.

The second thing would probably be, like others have said, just to ask -- and part of asking for help is making sure that you are able to actually receive the help. Perhaps partially because of the above, and also because i am not really a programmer (yet!), i have come to be hesitant to even try submitting anything. The process is too complex. I feel very uncomfortable with patches and pull requests and test cases, so please don't make me deal with them. Offer a 'dumbed down' way of submitting our contributions, or, perhaps, make somebody a liaison between people like me and people like your developers.

Large open-source projects in particular -- Firefox, GNOME, KDE -- are ones that i have the most interest in contributing to, but they have extremely high barriers of entry for people like me. (To a relative outsider it kind of seems like the design direction of these types of applications/suites is strictly controlled by some high-up cabal of developers, though, so perhaps that is intentional.)

edit: wording

Thank you for giving me a jumping off point for one of the points I want to make (and please excuse the tirade, which has nothing to do with you).

I have a certificate in GIS. We were taught that a good map will be visually appealing in a way that makes other people comment on that appeal but a pretty map isn't necessarily a good map. A good map is one that present information effectively and efficiently. Doing this well gives you an attractive piece of work in the way some well-engineered thing has a certain visual appeal. In places where the GIS is done as a separate thing and is not properly integrated, the GIS department becomes a "map shop" and they become all about making pretty maps. And it's broken. It's a sign that something is very wrong.

Coders need to get over the idea that designers "just make things pretty". I saw an HGTV show where the stager talked about his goal of drawing people down the hall, past the icky kitchen and out to the amazing views of the main living area. That was the selling point but you had to get people to physically walk past and largely ignore less attractive features of the place. "First impressions" are big in real estate. So finding a means to get them to literally get past those items and get to the good thing was like making magic.

Coders need to understand that design is like that -- or good design is, at least. It can be. And it can add real value. And what I am not seeing in this discussion is where those two pieces meet -- where do the coders communicate their vision or design needs to the designer? I am not seeing that at all.

I think I have decent "taste" but I am not good at website design. I got free assistance from someone way more knowledgeable than I was. I got lots of free assistance for a time with every aspect of my websites from people who valued the content, never mind my many shortcomings. I had a falling out with the person who did the design work and we aren't friends anymore. I still give credit on my sites to their contribution. I try hard to thank anyone who has contributed.

I understand the idealism behind open source. And some stuff wouldn't be created any other way. But the tendency for open source/all volunteer stuff to be tainted with so much bitterness is part of why I am on HN and trying to figure out how to monetize what I do. I will monetize it or go do something else. People have benefited enormously from my unique understanding of some niche topics. People with extremely difficult problems who, in many cases, have been failed by all the paid experts they ever turned to. I don't know yet how to monetize it. To me, that is important. Other people get other types of benefit out of participating in various sorts of "free"/all volunteer projects/settings. Figure out what will benefit the designers. And if you do nothing else, thank them and give them credit. That goes a long way with a lot of people. If you can't figure out anything else to do, do at least that much. Be gracious about it. Being a dick is a good way to make sure people who gave just don't come back. And if you can't do that because you have grown bitter yourself, get the hell out of FOSS and do something you feel is more gratifying/satisfying. I stopped doing some of the stuff I used to do because I was bitter and everyone around me was way more bitter than I was. Downright bitchy and hostile in many cases. And I don't want to live that way. If I can't give it freely, graciously, and with an open heart, then you don't need me pissing in your cheerios. You can just go to Walmart or something and buy some piece of shit without the poison pill to go with it.

/soap box-rant-tirade thingy