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Easy for someone who works at Apple to say "just throw money at the problem" while there is so much more to consider. Design as a workflow for Open Source desig

Easy for someone who works at Apple to say "just throw money at the problem" while there is so much more to consider. Design as a workflow for Open Source design (as in UI/UX) hasn't even been worked on that much. Ideally, open source contributors work on projects because they care about it, and want to improve it. I'm not sure how many designers are using GTK applications day-to-day to care enough about it to start contributing. There is a learning curve as well on how to contribute to these large projects. It'd be great if it could be solved with just one pass of design work and then it's done, but I'm afraid the task is much bigger than that, and "big wig design firms" are expensive, so are design people as well. Not to mention the other problems around that.

woah 5y ago
Inherently, good design requires top down authority to force a consistent look, and implementing it requires a bunch of programmers to spend time on boring work. That just doesn't work well in open source where people only want to work on their own thing, sometimes, and in their own way.
- capableweb 5y ago
  Same could be same about good software design (as in programming), but we've found to design well written software before in a open source manner, I'm sure we could (if we focus on it) figure out something for UI/UX design as well that works in a open source context. For example, style guides written and enforced by a small team can allow open contributions for the UI design. I think it's mostly that not many have tried to figure out how to organize and actually run large-scale open source design work for UI/UX and that's why we haven't figured it out, I don't think it's "inherently" impossible.
  - lwkl 5y ago
    And look at how these projects are organized. Most of the time it's pretty much top-down with a. It's why we have the term BDFL. > good software design (as in programming) That's the second problem. Most programmers probably know about about how good software design works, but have poor taste and prefer designs that aren't suitable for software that is to be used by non-programmers that want sane defaults that work and don't overwhelm them. Just look at the theming debate. People in software developer forums are mad about it. Most users probably don't even know it exists. They just want settings and a UI that's simple enough for them to understand and allow for some basic settings. So you would have to force volunteers to implement a design that they feel is bad. And you see how a lot of people react to it in the Gnome project where people leave because of it. But at the same time Gnome is a good example of how to do UI/UX for a big open source software project (even if you don't agree with their design decisions).
    - eru 5y ago
      > And look at how these projects are organized. Most of the time it's pretty much top-down with a. It's why we have the term BDFL. To make a more general point: top down leadership is not inherently bad. But in order for this to work well, people need to have the ability to enter and exit a project or polity at will. (See eg how McDonald's doesn't let customers vote what to put on their menu, but customers are free to eat at a competitor or make their own food at home. And compare that with North Korea also not letting citizens vote on their menu. But also taking steps to keep people from switching to a competing provider of government services, like South Korea. Similar also for the Berlin Wall.)
  - woah 5y ago
    No, definitely not. Good software does not require all the code in it to be written in the same style, and it never is.
- calvinmorrison 5y ago
  > good design requires top down authority to force a consistent look which hear me out here... was the whole point of having a standardized widget set and UI library.
azinman2 5y ago
As I mentioned before, Canonical and Red Hat have money and could afford proper designers. Programmers are expensive as well, and they have plenty of those on staff. Someone is putting together standard HIGs for Gnome, writing these standard themes, designing the base apps, etc. So you can't just say it's all decentralized and so there's no hope -- there's a ton of collaboration and top-down work happening with Gnome. Pulling in great UX/UI design talent should be prioritized.
- audidude 5y ago
  > As I mentioned before, Canonical and Red Hat have money and could afford proper designers. They do employ designers, including for GNOME. You might not like their designs. But to call them anything but proper is pretty mean spirited.

woah 5y ago

Inherently, good design requires top down authority to force a consistent look, and implementing it requires a bunch of programmers to spend time on boring work. That just doesn't work well in open source where people only want to work on their own thing, sometimes, and in their own way.

capableweb 5y ago
Same could be same about good software design (as in programming), but we've found to design well written software before in a open source manner, I'm sure we could (if we focus on it) figure out something for UI/UX design as well that works in a open source context. For example, style guides written and enforced by a small team can allow open contributions for the UI design. I think it's mostly that not many have tried to figure out how to organize and actually run large-scale open source design work for UI/UX and that's why we haven't figured it out, I don't think it's "inherently" impossible.
- lwkl 5y ago
  And look at how these projects are organized. Most of the time it's pretty much top-down with a. It's why we have the term BDFL. > good software design (as in programming) That's the second problem. Most programmers probably know about about how good software design works, but have poor taste and prefer designs that aren't suitable for software that is to be used by non-programmers that want sane defaults that work and don't overwhelm them. Just look at the theming debate. People in software developer forums are mad about it. Most users probably don't even know it exists. They just want settings and a UI that's simple enough for them to understand and allow for some basic settings. So you would have to force volunteers to implement a design that they feel is bad. And you see how a lot of people react to it in the Gnome project where people leave because of it. But at the same time Gnome is a good example of how to do UI/UX for a big open source software project (even if you don't agree with their design decisions).
  - eru 5y ago
    > And look at how these projects are organized. Most of the time it's pretty much top-down with a. It's why we have the term BDFL. To make a more general point: top down leadership is not inherently bad. But in order for this to work well, people need to have the ability to enter and exit a project or polity at will. (See eg how McDonald's doesn't let customers vote what to put on their menu, but customers are free to eat at a competitor or make their own food at home. And compare that with North Korea also not letting citizens vote on their menu. But also taking steps to keep people from switching to a competing provider of government services, like South Korea. Similar also for the Berlin Wall.)
- woah 5y ago
  No, definitely not. Good software does not require all the code in it to be written in the same style, and it never is.
calvinmorrison 5y ago
> good design requires top down authority to force a consistent look which hear me out here... was the whole point of having a standardized widget set and UI library.

azinman2 5y ago

As I mentioned before, Canonical and Red Hat have money and could afford proper designers. Programmers are expensive as well, and they have plenty of those on staff. Someone is putting together standard HIGs for Gnome, writing these standard themes, designing the base apps, etc. So you can't just say it's all decentralized and so there's no hope -- there's a ton of collaboration and top-down work happening with Gnome. Pulling in great UX/UI design talent should be prioritized.

audidude 5y ago
> As I mentioned before, Canonical and Red Hat have money and could afford proper designers. They do employ designers, including for GNOME. You might not like their designs. But to call them anything but proper is pretty mean spirited.