4 ms·

I'm not familiar with the software, but generally, I get why he left to go do his own thing. I've made a few forks of a few projects over the years considering

I'm not familiar with the software, but generally, I get why he left to go do his own thing. I've made a few forks of a few projects over the years considering it. I'm perpetually in the process of beating this dead horse, but FOSS would have so so many banging gold-standard user-facing apps if they enlisted the help of experienced UI or maybe UX designers and really worked to make them part of the community. To do their job right, they need to talk to the community to figure out what their needs are, and if maintainers shrug their shoulders while the few people who speak up are skeptically bikeshedding everything they say into oblivion, then we're also going to shrug our shoulders and walk away. That's what happened to me the several times I tried to contribute to various FOSS projects as a(n experienced, professional) designer rather than a(n experienced, professional, former) developer. Often, the response you get for merely intimating that something could work better if it was set up differently is like calling someone's kid ugly. It would be like a team of civil engineers working on a restaurant design scoffing at an architect that specializes in restaurants offering to help make an effective kitchen layout. From the civil engineers' perspective, the architect's input is superfluous and would probably slow down progress. Meanwhile, everyone else that has to interact with that kitchen suffers.

atoav 3y ago
I agree with you point about UX-professionals. I am not a professional UX designer, but I work in product/graphic/web design since 20 years. As such I volunteered for an open source project once, in a push which (according to the founding developer) was of great value to the project. Basically I just looked at all things as if I had seen them the first time and tried to formulate solutions that replaces gotchas with discoverability, makes unexpected things expected, sand down paper cuts, etc. This only worked because the founding developer was the benevolent dictator for life and I had one guy that I needed to convince. And that guy clearly was a genius in what he did and accepted that I was better than him in what I did. Now I don't know the Darktable project's organizational structure, but given the grievances aired here I assume there is no clear shared vision and nobody feels responsible for being really in charge of the software as a tool that solves problems. Now I am a nerd myself, but there is a kind of open source nerddom, where the people are in it for the coding first and not primarily for creating an elegant and nice to use tool. This can be okay, if there is someone in a deciding position of the project that at least cares about that aspect. If all contributers are just fiddling away in their own corners of the software you will get a patchwork of a software where different parts feel completely different.
- chefandy 3y ago
  I think that a part of FOSS culture for some developers is a backlash against the things that bother them when coding at work, and a designer having more say over how the interface works than the developer really pisses a lot of people off.
  - airtonix 3y ago
    [dead]
- creesch 3y ago
  > where the people are in it for the coding first and not primarily Oh man, you are not wrong there. The amount of pull requests and contributions I have seen that basically amount to a bit of refactoring for the sake of refactoring in FOSS certainly is higher than in non FOSS environments. Which likely has to do with there being more checks and balances in corporate software development.
goodmachine 3y ago
This is exactly right. If you've written further on this subject, I'd like to read it.
- chefandy 3y ago
  Planning on it. I'm compiling a list of points and counterpoints I've encountered when discussing this over the years and forming it into something informative that has practical actionable advice for everyone involved.
  - goodmachine 3y ago
    Sounds good! Standing by.
ungamedplayer 3y ago
> FOSS would have so so many banging gold-standard user-facing apps if they enlisted the help of experienced UI or maybe UX designers . And here lies the rub. I have tried soliciting help in the past . Most ui UX ppl only want to work on successful projects, but successful projects don't need help from ux/UI people.
- cchance 3y ago
  This is what i kinda figured to be the case, UI/UX and generally artists don't seem to participate in projects as much for free or for projects that aren't already successful where they'll get some publicity out of especially on the art side of things.
  - chefandy 3y ago
    And this is one of the big problems... not what you're talking about, but your understanding of what we do. 'Art' and UI/UX design are as different as fiction writers and technical writing. Someone might be good at both, but they're definitely not the same thing. Interfaces are a communication medium, and reasoning about the best way to communicate something is a process that often doesn't even touch aesthetics. These types of designers working for larger companies probably don't even get invited to the meetings where aesthetic decisions get made, and they definitely don't work for the art director who'd be involved in that. The first step is figuring out what problems your users are trying to solve, and the next step is working with them to figure out the most effective way to do that. It's pretty pointless when the users are insanely defensive about the status quo, as is the case in most FOSS projects.
  - asoneth 3y ago
    Many UX/UI design folks I know have unpaid side projects, they're just not FOSS. Nonprofit org websites, event posters, flyers, t-shirts, illustrations, small utility apps, WordPress themes, unsolicited redesigns of well-known applications on Dribble, etc. I spend my days convincing developers to make UI changes. Spending my nights and weekends doing the same thing but with even less authority does not sound like fun.
cchance 3y ago
I don't think i've ever agreed more with someone on here. I'm really not sure if its a case of UX/UI and art people not being willing or not seeing the demand in the FOSS community or FOSS communities to seek out those people to participate but dear god so many good FOSS projects just have horrid UI/UX because the guys doing these projects are great at backend but horrid at frontend, things like amazing AI apps just thrown in streamlit and called a day drive me nuts.
- chefandy 3y ago
  I've thought a lot about this. I think it goes much deeper than people merely not being great at interface work-- I think a lot of FOSS development is a backlash to the sort of development people have to do at work, where they're forced to reckon with designers that have more say about what the interface looks like than they do. Also, in many instances, these developers tell themselves that they are making great interfaces but they're just a little bit ugly, and people need to read the docs and get over it. Most computer users who use dozens of application every week will never read a single complete paragraph of software documentation in their entire lives. Why? Because they don't have to-- and many of these FOSS applications are doing things a lot simpler than what MS Outlook does. Also, anybody who's been to art school or mentored junior developers knows that we get most defensive about the things we're least confident in. Unfortunately, that comes out when trying to address UI problems in FOSS projects.
  - asoneth 3y ago
    > I think a lot of FOSS development is a backlash to the sort of development people have to do at work, where they're forced to reckon with designers that have more say about what the interface looks like than they do. I think you've captured the crux of the issue and the same applies to designers too. Say I just spent the last eight hours trying to convince a stubborn front-end developer that the reason customers complain about our UI and the product keeps failing usability tests is that it needs a UI overhaul and that telling people to "just RTFM" will not win us any new contracts. Getting home and having a similar debate with a FOSS dev team where I have even less sway does not sound like a rewarding way to spend my free time.
codethief 3y ago
> It would be like a team of civil engineers working on a restaurant design scoffing at an architect […] Meanwhile, everyone else that has to interact with that kitchen suffers. > chefandy Name checks out :-)
- chefandy 3y ago
  Been a long time since I worked in restaurants, but it sure sticks with you... for better or worse.

atoav 3y ago

I agree with you point about UX-professionals. I am not a professional UX designer, but I work in product/graphic/web design since 20 years. As such I volunteered for an open source project once, in a push which (according to the founding developer) was of great value to the project. Basically I just looked at all things as if I had seen them the first time and tried to formulate solutions that replaces gotchas with discoverability, makes unexpected things expected, sand down paper cuts, etc. This only worked because the founding developer was the benevolent dictator for life and I had one guy that I needed to convince. And that guy clearly was a genius in what he did and accepted that I was better than him in what I did. Now I don't know the Darktable project's organizational structure, but given the grievances aired here I assume there is no clear shared vision and nobody feels responsible for being really in charge of the software as a tool that solves problems. Now I am a nerd myself, but there is a kind of open source nerddom, where the people are in it for the coding first and not primarily for creating an elegant and nice to use tool. This can be okay, if there is someone in a deciding position of the project that at least cares about that aspect. If all contributers are just fiddling away in their own corners of the software you will get a patchwork of a software where different parts feel completely different.

chefandy 3y ago
I think that a part of FOSS culture for some developers is a backlash against the things that bother them when coding at work, and a designer having more say over how the interface works than the developer really pisses a lot of people off.
- airtonix 3y ago
  [dead]
creesch 3y ago
> where the people are in it for the coding first and not primarily Oh man, you are not wrong there. The amount of pull requests and contributions I have seen that basically amount to a bit of refactoring for the sake of refactoring in FOSS certainly is higher than in non FOSS environments. Which likely has to do with there being more checks and balances in corporate software development.

goodmachine 3y ago

This is exactly right. If you've written further on this subject, I'd like to read it.

chefandy 3y ago
Planning on it. I'm compiling a list of points and counterpoints I've encountered when discussing this over the years and forming it into something informative that has practical actionable advice for everyone involved.
- goodmachine 3y ago
  Sounds good! Standing by.

ungamedplayer 3y ago

> FOSS would have so so many banging gold-standard user-facing apps if they enlisted the help of experienced UI or maybe UX designers . And here lies the rub. I have tried soliciting help in the past . Most ui UX ppl only want to work on successful projects, but successful projects don't need help from ux/UI people.

cchance 3y ago
This is what i kinda figured to be the case, UI/UX and generally artists don't seem to participate in projects as much for free or for projects that aren't already successful where they'll get some publicity out of especially on the art side of things.
- chefandy 3y ago
  And this is one of the big problems... not what you're talking about, but your understanding of what we do. 'Art' and UI/UX design are as different as fiction writers and technical writing. Someone might be good at both, but they're definitely not the same thing. Interfaces are a communication medium, and reasoning about the best way to communicate something is a process that often doesn't even touch aesthetics. These types of designers working for larger companies probably don't even get invited to the meetings where aesthetic decisions get made, and they definitely don't work for the art director who'd be involved in that. The first step is figuring out what problems your users are trying to solve, and the next step is working with them to figure out the most effective way to do that. It's pretty pointless when the users are insanely defensive about the status quo, as is the case in most FOSS projects.
- asoneth 3y ago
  Many UX/UI design folks I know have unpaid side projects, they're just not FOSS. Nonprofit org websites, event posters, flyers, t-shirts, illustrations, small utility apps, WordPress themes, unsolicited redesigns of well-known applications on Dribble, etc. I spend my days convincing developers to make UI changes. Spending my nights and weekends doing the same thing but with even less authority does not sound like fun.

cchance 3y ago

I don't think i've ever agreed more with someone on here. I'm really not sure if its a case of UX/UI and art people not being willing or not seeing the demand in the FOSS community or FOSS communities to seek out those people to participate but dear god so many good FOSS projects just have horrid UI/UX because the guys doing these projects are great at backend but horrid at frontend, things like amazing AI apps just thrown in streamlit and called a day drive me nuts.

chefandy 3y ago
I've thought a lot about this. I think it goes much deeper than people merely not being great at interface work-- I think a lot of FOSS development is a backlash to the sort of development people have to do at work, where they're forced to reckon with designers that have more say about what the interface looks like than they do. Also, in many instances, these developers tell themselves that they are making great interfaces but they're just a little bit ugly, and people need to read the docs and get over it. Most computer users who use dozens of application every week will never read a single complete paragraph of software documentation in their entire lives. Why? Because they don't have to-- and many of these FOSS applications are doing things a lot simpler than what MS Outlook does. Also, anybody who's been to art school or mentored junior developers knows that we get most defensive about the things we're least confident in. Unfortunately, that comes out when trying to address UI problems in FOSS projects.
- asoneth 3y ago
  > I think a lot of FOSS development is a backlash to the sort of development people have to do at work, where they're forced to reckon with designers that have more say about what the interface looks like than they do. I think you've captured the crux of the issue and the same applies to designers too. Say I just spent the last eight hours trying to convince a stubborn front-end developer that the reason customers complain about our UI and the product keeps failing usability tests is that it needs a UI overhaul and that telling people to "just RTFM" will not win us any new contracts. Getting home and having a similar debate with a FOSS dev team where I have even less sway does not sound like a rewarding way to spend my free time.

codethief 3y ago

> It would be like a team of civil engineers working on a restaurant design scoffing at an architect […] Meanwhile, everyone else that has to interact with that kitchen suffers. > chefandy Name checks out :-)

chefandy 3y ago
Been a long time since I worked in restaurants, but it sure sticks with you... for better or worse.