Where are all the open source designers?

I was pleased SilverStripe hosted a Design and UX focused Meetup, it covered lots of things I’ve been thinking about recently, including where are all the OSS designers? So it was great to see a room full of people interested in the topic. I covered some big picture definitions of the difference between open design process, open source design and designing for OSS. You can find some more about those topics in this blog post.

Another thing we discussed was what defines good design for open source software. At Govt.nz at the moment, we’re thinking about how we can make the user interface design more modular so that it’s easier to reuse. Atomic design has been a useful concept for understanding what the base parts of the visual design are, and how they combine in various ways. This makes it much faster to build new parts of the site, more flexible for others to use, and leads to a more consistent user experience.

The workshop aspect was also great, we had great conversations about the barriers to entry for designers and the need to translate documentation into non-technical language. We also talked about the need for real life events where designers and developers can get together, and the Meetup was a great start!

(Check out Meg's talk from the SilverStripe UX and open source meetup)