Open Source Design

We welcome everyone to join us in connecting with people to promote and improve open source design.

We value learning and sharing freely through both our processes and results. Come and have a good time, exchange ideas, and solve problems with us.

Chat about remote usability tests on a budget, or how one could involve an online community in the design process. We might also discuss the trade offs between various open source tools, or brainstorm some ideas to promote libre design projects to university students. The possibilities are endless!

Before we start open discussions and getting to know each other, Open Source Designer Jan Muehlig will kick off the meetup with a short talk on the current state of UX in the open source world:

→ UX and design still have a marginal impact on open source projects, and while commercial companies all jump on the UX train and investing large sums in resources and processes, open sources projects are still heavily code centric, and thus developer centric. We suggest to make a concerted effort to change this. We can rely on many experiences from many projects. We have much more resources (design, UX, awareness, funding) than in the past. And we have a technological environment, where creating tools have become much cheaper and easier.
The idea is to setup a framework consisting of processes, resources and tools. We should consider this a lean approach, as we don’t now yet for sure what will work and what not. We should strive for building cases, to prove that UX in open source is possible, and that it creates superior results compared to code centric projects.
The meetup should be the first starting point, to understand and challenge the idea. The next step should be a one-day sprint, pinning down the pains, sketching solutions, in cross-functional teams. And the third step would be to setup up and coach willing and mature projects. //

FAQ: Do I need to be a programmer, designer, [some other role] to participate?
____ No, interest in design and in sharing your process and results with others is enough.

What does »open source design« mean?
____It means that we aim to share process and results of our design projects for others to learn from and to build upon it. You can see it in contrast to a secretive, non-collaborative design process which often results in things that are not licensed in a way that others can reuse and build upon the work.

____Is this constrained to Mozilla products and services?
No. Mozilla is involved (and donated the space!) but there are other projects on board, too. Everyone and everything is welcome!

____What do you mean by design?
We mean it broadly, encompassing activities like need research, interaction design, graphic design and usability testing.

For more information, check out the Open Source Design Website:
http://opensourcedesign.net

Directions for finding the event space:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bwI3ztOV4WRpg_xCy4etR7DJ2oL2UfltF2O8m6WwFFQ