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As a long time creative worker in addition to my technical work, I’ve tried in vain to explain to the FOSS crowd that names, UIs, user flows, etc a) really matt

As a long time creative worker in addition to my technical work, I’ve tried in vain to explain to the FOSS crowd that names, UIs, user flows, etc a) really matter if they want anyone outside of the technical world to use their tools, and b) what other software developers think of them isn’t a good measure of those things. What Mastodon would need to have done to be a Twitter replacement for general audiences was my most recent losing battle. Lots of haughty, dismissive “federation is not that complicated” and “I think toots is a cute analog to tweet and the people who don’t like it just need to get over it.” Well, the nearly immediate mass exodus after the incredibly energetic mass adoption says everything we need to know about that. “Well I don’t think it’s too complicated,” doesn’t really say much from someone whose profession is wrangling that complexity. “Well I don’t think it’s unappealing,” doesn’t say much from someone that has no experience wrangling the different nuanced ways different things can be appealing to different people in different contexts and how that affects the way people approach and interact with stuff. Interface design, copywriting, branding— these are all communication mediums that deal with the emotional intangibles, instincts, and irrational tendencies we all have even when we don’t see them. It’s not about taste and aesthetic preference, they’re tools to solve communication problems. Developers on a whole have a hard enough time dealing with communication in technical documentation for software they wrote, let alone effective visual communication. I’m seeing some progress in developers realizing how much more impact software can have as a problem solving tool when designers are involved… but a whole lot still think designers just add frivolous fluff and that their quirky interfaces more informed by the API implementation than how users solve problems isn’t the problem — users failing to read their wall-o-text documentation is.

muppetman 2y ago
I agree it's always amazing that FOSS can be so smart, but so dumb as to not understand basic marketing.
- chefandy 2y ago
  I wouldn’t even expect them to understand basic marketing themselves: there’s a lot more to it than many assume. I would hope they could understand the value of someone that does. There’s this kind of “well if I don’t understand it then it’s probably not worth understanding” cockiness in software that I was definitely guilty of in my twenties at the very least. Someone thinking they can dismiss expert knowledge or even entire fields out-of-hand based on a few a priori thought experiments says a lot more about that person than the fields they denigrate.
vrighter 2y ago
I still try, occasionally. I agree that it's very hard to convince the OSS community to think about the user first and foremost. Especially with the fact that choice is not a good thing for the vast majority of the world, and is not valued as much as they think. But suggest that forking or rewriting (in rust!) a project for the Nth time is stupid, and everyone should be focused on making one really good implementation that doesn't have to keep reinventing wheels, and you will be burned at the stake.

muppetman 2y ago

I agree it's always amazing that FOSS can be so smart, but so dumb as to not understand basic marketing.

chefandy 2y ago
I wouldn’t even expect them to understand basic marketing themselves: there’s a lot more to it than many assume. I would hope they could understand the value of someone that does. There’s this kind of “well if I don’t understand it then it’s probably not worth understanding” cockiness in software that I was definitely guilty of in my twenties at the very least. Someone thinking they can dismiss expert knowledge or even entire fields out-of-hand based on a few a priori thought experiments says a lot more about that person than the fields they denigrate.

vrighter 2y ago

I still try, occasionally. I agree that it's very hard to convince the OSS community to think about the user first and foremost. Especially with the fact that choice is not a good thing for the vast majority of the world, and is not valued as much as they think. But suggest that forking or rewriting (in rust!) a project for the Nth time is stupid, and everyone should be focused on making one really good implementation that doesn't have to keep reinventing wheels, and you will be burned at the stake.