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

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

#41

Post by Sirupsen »

us wrote: post #33
Sirupsen wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely easier for developers to contribute to open source projects, they can just dig into the code and easily contribute patches. Designing for a project requires a lead to a greater extent to keep the design consistent, whereas programming is more defined and concrete work: "This is wrong, fix it." If the issue no longer occurs after the patch is applied, work is done. Design work is more abstract in that…

I'm sorry but I strongly disagree (btw, I'm not the one that downvoted you; I don't have that option). 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 o…

Designers should contribute to projects they care about and use, adding the project to their portfolio should not be the sole reason to join the project. If you care only about portfolio, then designing a killer wordpress theme might be the way to go.

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

#42

Post by mnutt »

us wrote: post #33
Sirupsen wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely easier for developers to contribute to open source projects, they can just dig into the code and easily contribute patches. Designing for a project requires a lead to a greater extent to keep the design consistent, whereas programming is more defined and concrete work: "This is wrong, fix it." If the issue no longer occurs after the patch is applied, work is done. Design work is more abstract in that…

I'm sorry but I strongly disagree (btw, I'm not the one that downvoted you; I don't have that option). 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 o…

By designing a killer Wordpress theme, you are contributing to an open source project...

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

#43

Post by knowtheory »

rue wrote: post #36
jacobolus wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re missing the point. If an open-source project treated a programmer with the same lack of respect, I wouldn’t expect any different a response. There’s no “contract” that says I have to volunteer my time to someone who won’t even appreciate the donation. On the other hand, I’m not sure it’s fair to indict all open-source projects based on one side of a single story. I’d be interested to hear more of the details i…

I understand what you're saying…but as an open-source contributor I certainly expect that my code can be modified for various reasons. I guess a “work of art” would feel more personal, and (unless given a tight spec of elements that must be included) is more of a candidate for either rejection or admission as-is. For changes I'd certainly expect a request “can you add a wizard hat on the ninja?” rather than someone m…

Actually the whole mentality that this was just a work of art is the problem.

When you do design for applications there are functional and conceptual components to the design. If people are taking your work and buggering up your intent, that's a problem, just the same way it is when someone takes code and alters its behavior without consideration for the code's intent.

The experience the designer had, and this conversation just belies the remaining gulf between the two groups.

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

#46

Post by Andrex »

replicatorblog wrote: post #13

1. Ask for help - I'm a designer that reads HN everyday and I wouldn't know where to look if I wanted to participate in an open source project. Is there a list? The problem is most OS software aside from GIMP/Inkscape doesn't make its way in front of designers often. 2. Make it discrete - What needs to be designed? The entire UI and workflows? The application icon? The internal navigation glyphs? Redesigning an entir…

Funny you mention GIMP, that's one OSS program that needs a UI refresh badly.

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

#47

Post by jarin »

Maybe it would be a good idea to put some donations together and actually hire designers on contract. That way, you are less likely to run into the problem of developers overwriting design changes willy-nilly, and you get a higher quality of design work that can last for several rounds of iterations.

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

#48

Post by nir »

us wrote: post #17
Charuru wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds unfair, developers don't get paid, why do designers do.

Because developers greatly benefit from participating in open source projects, designers usually don't. That said, developers also make more money than designers do and in a tech centric world, there are more needs for devs than designers. That's why.

For most OSS devs, the benefit is having a more interesting portfolio, especially skills they don't get to use in their day job. Wouldn't this work the same way for designers?

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

#49

Post by jiipee_2 »

Many reasons why this is hard. 1) UI design needs to be understood and implemented as a whole. This does not sound good for most of developers. I don't know why. 2) Of course, good UI designer (I wish I am) can create bite-sized chunks - divide UI plan into small parts that are more manageable from the development perspective. UI designer still has to be able to say what parts need to be there before the overall improvement is justified - in other words, when the resulting UI can be evaluated. 3) Developers have always an opinion what is good UI. Many features that make something very good to use for non-tech-people, or easy to learn, do not match into developer view of good UI. 4) Development environment tools, vocabulary and tools are not UI-designer friendly. 5) Dealing the above issues in daily work does not leave energy to have the same problems at free time.

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

#50

Post by EGreg »

I think that in order to critique design objectively, you need a set of standards and guidelines for design, like the Apple iOS Guidelines. These can be open-sourced themselves, and forked for various projects.

Without these guidelines, it will be as tough to tell the designer what to do as it would explaining an obscure C++ error without any reference to C++.

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