How did these designers first become involved in OSS?

[Erioldoesdesign]

We learned there were a variety of ways designers came to discover and contribute to OSS. Many found their OSS pathway by engaging with communities, either around design, a coding language, university programs/groups or a group formed around a particular usage/purpose of OSS (e.g. Hacktoberfest, Linux groups, Python groups etc.). The critical similarity being that early on in their OSS design journey, all had contact with a person/people who had experience in being present in OSS as a contributor. From the way that our participants spoke, these were all reasonably positive and supportive experiences, which reinforces the need for positive early community inclusion experiences.

One designer who also identifies as a "developer hobbyist" found a local meet-up for Ruby coding language where most people identified as developers 5-6 years ago. They were curious and looking for communities to hang out with as a hobby developer, which then led to their sustained involvement in a particular OSS project. Another participant originally identified as and contributed to OSS as a coder, but then found an OSS community in need of illustrations and logos and contributed those. They then grew their career as a designer through OSS community participation and contribution.

One designer started their OSS journey in 2021 when they saw an article about OSS design and then joined a discord community called "Design Buddies". There, they searched for OSS Design and another community member’s name popped up and they messaged the community member. After a series of messages asking about OSS and design, the designer mentioned a particular OSS project they had used for music to which they were interested in making a design contribution. This led to them to make their first design contributions with support from the other community member.

Another designer was involved in OSS while studying at university where there was a FOSS program (OpenRIT) but did not contribute to FOSS outside of that program. After graduating, they were hired to design OSS tools and have been there ever since. They describe their contributions as completely paid work, though this definition gets fuzzier as they often need to write and submit fundraising applications (in volunteer time) for certain design work that is not prioritized in the typical grant funding cycles of their OSS (e.g. writing grant applications) to help explicitly fund design work they believe is critical to the OSS. A designer ended up changing their whole tool ecosystem after seeing a friend working on a Linux machine with free and open source tools. It is worth noting this designer does not know how to code and describes themself as aligned with progressive social movements. This designer spoke about the existence of, and participation in OSS as "liberating" and "ethical".

Many of the designers' motivations for OSS are shared. There is a belief that free and open tools are "good", and healthy for the technology ecosystem and designers want to offer their time and skills to them. When designers have an understanding of "healthy technology/infrastructure" purposes, they can better understand why a project exists and offer more relevant design support. The second most common reason designers get involved in OSS is to build up skills for their own careers and portfolios, either through paid or unpaid contributions.