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> The FOSS development paradigm seems to be allergic to good UI design I'm having a hard time understanding what it is about the development paradigm that's al

by gspr 6y ago

> The FOSS development paradigm seems to be allergic to good UI design I'm having a hard time understanding what it is about the development paradigm that's allergic to good UI design. In good faith I'll assume you meant that "FOSS projects seem to lack good UI design". This I'll agree with, if we're talking about GUI design (others have pointed out that the CLI interfaces are usually great). I really don't think the lacking GUI design is necessarily inherent in FOSS, but I too wonder why more people with design skills aren't attracted to working on FOSS stuff.

drums8787 6y ago
Also don’t know about the paradigm per se, but I suspect a lot of FOSS developers are CLI first type users. Secondly, they are mostly not working in environments where GUI UX designers are part of the process. Thirdly, good UX design doesn’t happen by committee. Pure speculation on the first two.
- myself248 6y ago
  Case-sensitive filesystems. Quod erat demonstratum.
yoz-y 6y ago
Good UI design usually comes from one person knowing what they are doing and the programmers willing to follow. In OSS people are often motivated by full control.
- gspr 6y ago
  Really? In many-person collaborative OSS projects, there seems to be a decent amount of belief that others can do better work than oneself.
  - username90 6y ago
    You need to redesign your code architecture to fit the UI or you wont get a world class UI. That isn't what happens though, instead they hook in UI interactions so it looks like the designs but doesn't really work as well as you'd wish. I've never seen a developer who gladly did the architectural redesigns needed to make UI truly great.
selfhoster11 5y ago
> I'm having a hard time understanding what it is about the development paradigm that's allergic to good UI design. There may not be causation, but there is definitely a strong correlation. KDE is approximately 2x as annoying to use as an intensive daily driver compared to a Windows 10 modded with OpenShell (aka Classic Shell) and a few smaller tweaks. I know this because I run them side by side, one for work and one for personal use. Don't get me started on Gnome Shell, it's a train wreck for those familiar with/expecting a classic GUI.

by gspr 6y ago

drums8787 6y ago

Also don’t know about the paradigm per se, but I suspect a lot of FOSS developers are CLI first type users. Secondly, they are mostly not working in environments where GUI UX designers are part of the process. Thirdly, good UX design doesn’t happen by committee. Pure speculation on the first two.

myself248 6y ago
Case-sensitive filesystems. Quod erat demonstratum.

yoz-y 6y ago

Good UI design usually comes from one person knowing what they are doing and the programmers willing to follow. In OSS people are often motivated by full control.

gspr 6y ago
Really? In many-person collaborative OSS projects, there seems to be a decent amount of belief that others can do better work than oneself.
- username90 6y ago
  You need to redesign your code architecture to fit the UI or you wont get a world class UI. That isn't what happens though, instead they hook in UI interactions so it looks like the designs but doesn't really work as well as you'd wish. I've never seen a developer who gladly did the architectural redesigns needed to make UI truly great.

selfhoster11 5y ago

> I'm having a hard time understanding what it is about the development paradigm that's allergic to good UI design. There may not be causation, but there is definitely a strong correlation. KDE is approximately 2x as annoying to use as an intensive daily driver compared to a Windows 10 modded with OpenShell (aka Classic Shell) and a few smaller tweaks. I know this because I run them side by side, one for work and one for personal use. Don't get me started on Gnome Shell, it's a train wreck for those familiar with/expecting a classic GUI.