Col Zwi Blog

Bellowing bits into the depths of the net.

Its Free, its Transparent, but not visual -- OSS Design needs an upgrade

Are you inspired to develop open source software? Wait don't answer. On a scale of 1 to 10, how inspired are you to develop open source software?

Now, look at this screenshot draft for Ubuntu's upcoming GTK theme:
Brand?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=darktheme.png

On that same scale, how inspired are you to develop now?

How about Nautilus (the Gnome file manager)? 1 to 10, how inspired?

Take a look at this:
new-nautilus_zeitgeist.png
Development looking a little peppier?

I think this is an issue with the Open Source community. We're open, transparent, but not visual. Just try finding screen mockups in Gnome's roadmap. 

Why share screenshots, mockups, and mock interaction videos?
  • It gets developer excited about the project their working on
  • Design problems become apparent before heavy investment in development
  • Show off OSS and our goals to all net denizens
  • Draw in non-OSS integrated developers (like me!)

What is the situation right now?

How do designers get developers excited about their ideas? Truth be told, I can't really tell. Some case studies.

Project Hamster -- Designer and Developer in one

interactive-graphs.png?w=720
If you haven't heard, Hamster is an epic time tracking tool being considered for inclusion in the next release of Gnome. As far as I can tell, all design and the majority of development are done by one man: Toms Bauģis. Project Hamster is fantastic, and Toms is clearly an awesome developer. But where would Project Hamster be if Toms was a designer leading development? What kind of cool screenshots does he have cooking?

MadsRH -- Blog Idea Seeding
Got beef with the Gnome Background selection dialog? Who doesn't? MadsRH came ups with a solution mockup to the lack of a way to add slideshow backgrounds:
background-Screenshot.jpg

And he linked his idea from Ubuntu Brainstorm.

Ian Cylkowski does the same with his redesign of Nautilus

As does Seif Lofty

In fact, this seems to be the main form of design communication in the OSS world: blog posts.

David Siegel -- Papercuts
David, the lead on Gnome DO and now Canonical employee does more design leadership. His big shtick is papercuts, hundreds of small improvements that are simple for developers to fix and have a large benefit to users when they are set right.

His latest set of papercuts for Lucid:
https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/hundredpapercuts/+bugs?field.searchtext=&orderby=-importance&search=Search&field.status:list=NEW&field.status:list=CONFIRMED&field.status:list=TRIAGED&field.status:list=INPROGRESS&assignee_option=any&field.assignee=&field.bug_reporter=&field.bug_supervisor=&field.bug_commenter=&field.subscriber=&field.milestone:list=22293&field.milestone:list=22302&field.milestone:list=22294&field.milestone:list=22295&field.milestone:list=22296&field.milestone:list=22297&field.milestone:list=22298&field.milestone:list=22299&field.milestone:list=22300&field.milestone:list=22301&field.tag=&field.tags_combinator=ANY&field.has_cve.used=&field.omit_dupes.used=&field.omit_dupes=on&field.affects_me.used=&field.has_patch.used=&field.has_branches.used=&field.has_branches=on&field.has_no_branches.used=&field.has_no_branches=on

A need for tools
The situation here is not ideal. There is no reason as an OSS developer I should have to slog through wiki pages or personal blogs to find design insights. A beautiful screen mockup can be development a joy, or can make development occur where it might not otherwise.

Other OSSers are look/dreaming of design tools. Mairin Duffy is frustrated that design collaboration occurs much less outside of GNOME London UX Hackfest. She dubs designer <-> developer interaction "challenge B" . She suggests a a webapp that allows sharing screen mockups, automatically links IRC discussion of the image, and shows the evolution of the mockup. 

Prognosis -- OSS: a plethora of developer tools, a lack of designer tools. I think this should change.

What do you think? Comment or shoot me a message: colin { at } zonion { dot } org