I can think of a couple of issues that may add some friction: - Adding good UX to an existing project is a huge undertaking. To do a good job you probably want

I can think of a couple of issues that may add some friction: - Adding good UX to an existing project is a huge undertaking. To do a good job you probably want to touch just about every piece of the UI. This can be a hard sell as a new project member. - Many designers don't have the skills to implement their design. This means that the best they can do is basically propose that other contributors do a lot of work. It is a lot easier to just merge a PR that works then implement a design. - The maintainers of projects are probably more familiar with accepting code patches. They know how to evaluate code but don't have a strong ability to review UX proposals. I have a bunch of small tools that I maintain and that occasionally get code contributions. But I know that they have terrible UX. I would be thrilled to get some support in that area, however if someone without frontend experience just proposed the end result. I don't know if I would have enough motivation to implement it myself. Of course I suspect that a skilled UX Designer with frontend development experience would be a very welcome contributor to many projects.