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Ask HN: Would you participate in a messageboard for open source UX ideas?
Hi, I'd love to hear feedback on the following idea: a messageboard where people can review and discuss interface ideas for software or hardware.
For some time, I have been thinking of creating a discussion board where people can post interface ideas for open source software. These might be visual mock-ups or interface flows. It could even be ideas for an API or a language for laying out web pages.
UX design (by which I primarily mean visual and interaction design) has always had a difficult relationship with open source software (IMO). So why create a discussion board? I think designers work best by solving problems by themselves or with a small group of fellow collaborators. The large, distributed nature of many open source projects (with many developers) simply doesn't work well for UX design.
A discussion board will allow anyone with a mock-up to post their idea and seek feedback from other designers or developers. They can then take on board that feedback or ignore it. Someone else may take that same idea and expand it in another direction (much like forking software).
The important point is that the seed of the interface idea comes from an individual or a small group of collaborators, not a committee or the wide open web. That may sound a bit undemocratic, but when everyone has a say in the design of a user interface, the result is often a UI that pleases no-one.
What do readers think? A good idea? Something you would be interested in participating in?
- brudgers 11y agoI think the value proposition is all in the implementation. Community is hard. Good luck.
- open-source-ux 11y agoThanks :-) Yes, I agree. Building a community is probably the hardest part. Perhaps a bit more focus might help in the proposition? For example, pre-set design challenges for readers to submit ideas in addition to open submissions.
- brudgers 11y agoImplemented artifacts can embody the proposition and make it explicit in ways that describing an idea cannot. Until there's a URL, A/B testing cannot begin.
- krapp 11y agoI would worry that such a narrow focus (open source interface design) might not be enough to sustain an active community. It might work as long as you don't mind low traffic. It sounds more like a topic for a thread or subforum on a larger forum to me, though.
- open-source-ux 11y agoYes, that's a good point. One idea I have is to set a regular design challenge for an existing open source app. For example, take a particular feature or task from an open source app and challenge readers to come up with an alternative way of performing that task: How could that feature be implemented in a more user friendly way? I realise there's a danger of being a bit piecemeal in this approach to UX design, but small design challenges like this are still useful and (hopefully) enjoyable to practice.
- coryl 11y agoUX concepts are best described with images/gifs/screencasts. What would your service do differently than say dribble?
- open-source-ux 11y agoI'd hope that people would post example flows (of different screens) or interaction details for an interface idea. They may be wireframes or sketches. They don't have to be polished mock-ups. The only way to get people to post these is of course to have examples that encourage readers to post more of the same. But getting to that point is of course difficult when starting a messageboard community :-)
- fundamental 11y agoIt really depends on which applications get discussed. Personally I wouldn't care about anything web related, but data centric (think plots, sliders, etc) desktop apps would be very interesting to discuss.
- seekingcharlie 11y agoYou don't need feedback on your product from designers & developers. You need it from users. This just seems like a distraction IMHO.