Our presentation about why human-centred designers should contribute to free and open source software at the HCID 2019 Open Day. (June 18th 2019)
Slides are available at https://belenbarrospena.github.io/openly_good_hcid2019
Welcome to this presentation about design and FOSS. Today's theme is design for good, and it seems to be all the rage. I keep on hearing UX bigwigs tellings us to be ethical in our design practice. But there is a corner of the software world where ethics and values have always played a fundamental role. That corner is called FOSS.
FOSS is acronym. It stands for free and open source software. The reason why we need to use this acronym is that, in theory, free and open source software are different things. But for the purposes of this talk, we are more interested in how they are similar than on how they are different. And, as it turns out, there are plenty of similarities between them. This is the definition of free software. And this is the definition of Open Source software. As you can see: they are very, very similar. Both are software whose source code is available for anybody to see, modify and redistribute. This means that, instead of just having access to the machine-readable code - the ones and zeros - we can look at the human-readable version of that code. And we can not just look at it: we can use it, change it, and share it with others.
Now that you know what FOSS is, let me ask you a question. Please stand up if you use FOSS. Mmmmmm, all those people still sitting down: are you sure? Sit down, please, and let me ask you a different question: please stand up if you use the web. Well, I have news for you: if you use the web, you are using FOSS. Because you see, every single web browser out there is based on FOSS: Chrome is built on top of the Chromium project, which is FOSS. Safari, Mail and the App Store are built on top of Webkit, which is also FOSS. And, if you happen to use Firefox, well, Firefox is a FOSS browser based on a FOSS project called Gecko. And it’s not just your browsers: 85% of the web servers out there are either Apache or Nginx: both FOSS projects. And those web servers run on an operating system called Linux, which is also a FOSS project. Every single one of us uses FOSS every single day. That’s how important FOSS is. Computing as we know it exists because, and is made possible by, free and open source software.
A lot of people believe that all FOSS projects are very technical projects: things like web browser engines, cryptography libraries, or web servers. The pipes, nuts and bolts of computing. That is actually not true: there are thousands upon thousands of FOSS projects, in all domains. Desktop publishing, finance, science, statistics, assistive technologies, machine learning, communications, video, education, healthcare, office suites, project management, theology … you name it! And there are plenty of FOSS projects making tools for designers. There is a raster image editor called Gimp; a vector image editor called Inkscape; a 3D design program called Blender; and an animation tool called OpenToonz. And all these FOSS design tools are professional-grade tools, as good as, and sometimes patently better, than their closed source, and very expensive, commercial equivalents. OpenToonz in fact is the tool that Studio Ghibli uses to make their animated movies. Do you know Futurama? Well, it was made with OpenToonz.
One of the remarkable things about FOSS is how it’s made. FOSS is not made by a team of people employed by a single company, as commercial software is. FOSS is made by individuals who volunteer their time and skills. Those volunteers are most of the time distributed across different companies, and spread all over the world. And they are not just software developers. In order to make and maintain software, writing code is only one of the many skills needed. And so you have volunteers who write code, but you also have volunteers who test that code to make sure it works; you have writers who produce documentation; you have translators who localise the software; you have community managers; you have event organisers; you have marketing people; you have graphic designers; and you have users, who put the software through its paces, file bugs and request new features. There is one group of people, however, who are usually involved in making commercial software, who have remained spectacularly absent from Free and Open Source software: human-centred designers. Interaction designers, user researchers, user experience professionals, information architects, content strategists. In short, the designers who are responsible for building software that makes sense to the people who use it, are nowhere to be seen. Why this is so, we do not know, but as a group we are leaving a phenomenal gap. FOSS is a gianormous human-centred design black hole. As a result, the quality of our FOSS software is worse than it should be; FOSS software does not reach all the people who could benefit from it; and as a design community, we are missing the opportunity to influence and impact extraordinarily important pieces of software, and to make users’ lives better as a result.
The FOSS community is ready to receive human-centred design, and is eager to do so. But we, human-centred designers, must join them. It is very important that we make our expertise available, and that we start to contribute to FOSS.
You must be wondering: well, how? How do you get involved with a FOSS project? How do you volunteer your time? How do you make a contribution? Here come some tips on how to get started.
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Find a project you are passionate about. There are thousands upon thousands of FOSS projects, touching almost any subject. What is it that matters to you? What would you like to improve? Are you interested in health informatics? Education? Tools for design? Privacy and security? News and journalism? Video production? Gaming? Science? Whatever it is, there will be one or more FOSS projects already in the space. If you are unsure about what to choose, and would like some inspiration, visit the Open Source Design jobs board. Some FOSS projects who want design help post requests there.
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Get to know the software: whatever it is you want to contribute to, install it and start using it. Play with it, make yourself intimately familiar with its design and functionality.
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Study the community developing and maintaining the software. Find their source code repository, their bug tracker, their documentation, their conferences and their communication channels. Most FOSS projects do not use Slack: they use IRC. They are also likely to use a forum, a mailing list, a wiki, one or more blogs and they may have a regular phone or video call. Register and join all those. Observe for a while: find out who is who and who does what. Introduce yourself: say who you are, what you do, and why you are interested in the project.
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Consider attending the FOSS conferences, particularly the ones where designers hang out. The Libre Graphics Meeting, FOSDEM and ApacheCon Europe, which is coming up in October, and where there will be some sessions about design in FOSS.
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Find out how design work is currently done and structured in your chosen project. Some projects will tag design issues in their repositories, others will have special irc channels or mailing lists for design contributors. Figure out where the designers are, if there are any, and adopt their processes and tools to start with.
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Before you start designing, consider making a smaller contribution. Open a bug if you have discovered that something is not working as it should; or fix a typo in the documentation. FOSS communities appreciate those contributions very much.
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When it comes to choosing your first contribution, ask if there is anything the community would like you to work on. It may not be your first choice, or it may not be very interesting, but it will signal the community that you are willing to help and willing to take their lead. Respect their criteria and priorities, even if you don’t fully agree with them. There are often good reasons behind them.
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And be patient. Compared to the agile, two-week sprint world where we are always fighting deadlines, FOSS is the "slow food" of the software world. FOSS can take its time because projects are there for the long-run, as are the majority of the people involved. To us designers, there are many benefits in this slow pace. You can take time to research your users and get to know your community; and you can take time to iterate your designs.
If you are currently studying your masters here at City university, consider choosing a FOSS project as the object of your course work. FOSS projects tend to be sympathetic to academic endeavours, and they are likely to help you. Work with them to choose a piece of work that is interesting to you, appropriate for your assignment, and useful to the project.
Finally, if you join the FOSS world, you will need to be ready to explain why human-centred design is important, and what are the benefits of adopting its tenets and techniques. In many FOSS projects design is still understood as graphic design. It is likely the community you join will know very little about interaction design or information architecture, and probably they have never done any research with their users. So take it slow, and aim for baby steps.
And with this, you are ready to jump in. But don’t worry: you will not be alone. The Open Source Design collective is a group of designers and developers who work to increase the presence and participation of human-centre design in FOSS. Join us, and help us make FOSS better.