Phew what a day folks. Ready to hear about another day in the life of a designer in FOSS?
The day started at 09.00 with a design circle sync. This is a biweekly meeting that is open to everyonein our OSS community to join design or not.

-Eriol @erioldoesdesign

Our biweekly design circle gives us a chance, as designers to share what problems we are working on across the OSS project. From User Research interviews to new feature UI and UX to discovery work with the community to keep up with issues and processes.

-Eriol @erioldoesdesign

The OSS designers are spread across various timezones so not everyone can make the one synchronous meeting so we make sure to take notes and post these to anyone that might be interested.

-Eriol @erioldoesdesign

Design can often be considered a mysterious function of technology and in all my design roles across OSS part of what I do is trying to open up what design does, how and why. So that the wider OSS team and community can be included.

-Eriol @erioldoesdesign

Documenting what you’re doing as a designer is a good first step to making design shift towards more of an open source friendly model.

-Eriol @erioldoesdesign

Opening up your files and processes with written ‘What I’ve done… comments’ or even recording short videos and screen recordings can be super helpful.

-Eriol @erioldoesdesign

I then had a meeting with my PhD cohort! I’m really excited to be doing funded research into how designers work on humanitarian OSS. Eventually, I’ll be continuing the @opendesignis work through my PhD so can’t wait!

-Eriol @erioldoesdesign

One of the key aspects of my PhD research for how designers can participate in humanitarian OSS project will be how to include designers at a global scale in OSS.

-Eriol @erioldoesdesign

Being able to support folks in under-represented majorities, across countries and communities that are under-served and under-included is very important.

-Eriol @erioldoesdesign

When you’re working on an OSS that has a global use, you need design input that is also global (of course!) looking at how my PhD research and funding enables involvement for communities like @oscafrica is key to how design in OSS moves forward.

-Eriol @erioldoesdesign

Lunchtime rolled around and I had planned a call with one of our product managers at #OpenFoodNetwork

We talked about how we can best involve our community in an approval and feedback process for design work in the OSS tool.

-Eriol @erioldoesdesign

Our OSS community is made up of a mixture of techies, product folks, researchers, designer, support people, people that look after instances of our software and our users!

-Eriol @erioldoesdesign

Our instance managers and users are usually food producers who sell their food (and other goods) through our OSS platform. Our OSS is deeply tied with how our community maintain their livelihood. It’s critical they are involved in our OSS processes.

-Eriol @erioldoesdesign

However, feedback on design can get subjective quickly! though our community members are also our users, we must be careful to remember they don’t represent the entirety of our user base.

-Eriol @erioldoesdesign

So including their voices alongside the other voice that aren’t well represented in our OSS community (but still use and need us) is critical. This takes time, effort and careful consideration of their time for feedback.

-Eriol @erioldoesdesign

We’re getting towards a place where our process of community involvement in design for our OSS is giving us the kind of feedback we need to ensure we’re building and improving the OSS in the ways that matter but we’re still testing and refining this.

-Eriol @erioldoesdesign

I don’t see much information out there for product managers and designers in OSS on how best to work in a space like OSS where there can be variations and differences in community models.

-Eriol @erioldoesdesign

In the commercial world, these processes are relatively well established and followed but often don’t have the intensity of community involvement that OSS does.

-Eriol @erioldoesdesign

This makes me think of something that @joshsimmons mentioned at #stateofthesource earlier this year about how OSS becomes sustainable by inviting in and being welcoming of all aspects of OSS, not just the code!

-Eriol @erioldoesdesign

Hearing support from folks like Josh, doing awesome work for the future of #OSS is one of the things that keeps me working hard towards better design representation and opportunities in OSS!

-Eriol @erioldoesdesign

So, you open-sourcerers out there, talk about design! ask questions! let us in the design world know you're thinking about us and how we work and want to involve us more!

Invite us, welcome us and we will be there with buckets of enthusiasm.

-Eriol @erioldoesdesign