How do designers decide whether they’d like to contribute to or work on an OSS project?

[Erioldoesdesign]

Most designers were aligned in how they first came to the decision to contribute to an OSS. The following being the most common ways of deciding an OSS project is ready for design contributions:

• Is it reasonably clear what the OSS project wants from the design/designer? Is the project clear what problems they want solved by the designer?

• Am I able to do that skill/task or am I able to learn how to do it for this contribution?

• How "in need" is the project? Are there others that can do this or does the project have good enough support to get this done elsewhere?

• Is this OSS a one-person project and is it still active?

• How close is this OSS to my culture/geo-location? Will I be able to contribute in my native language comfortably and be welcomed with my context?

• Does the documentation make sense to me and can I learn enough about the OSS in order to participate?

One designer described a problem with OSS and design contributions early on in the process: “OSS (projects) don’t create design issues very often. People (running OSS projects) don’t know how to describe the problem although OSS people may know there is a problem. Very few if any are managing the problem or issue”. These were described as "stagnant problems".
Most designers are looking at the OSS project’s GitHub and looking for "activity" and recent issues. This helps to alleviate some designers' fears described by one in the study as “(I’m) hesitant to just contribute a design and it’s tossed into a void and you never know if (and hope) someone will do something with it. I want certainty”. Interest in a project’s activity extends to social media spaces designers are mostly active on, that developers are not (e.g. Twitter, Dribbble, Behance, LinkedIn etc). If an OSS project is active and communicative on platforms they see an "alive" project.

For the rare designers paid to work on projects, they described them as being "handed" to them, and the OSS project’s attitude as “we have a ux designer now! We can get help”. These paid designers sometimes have a choice about who they want to help but this is often dictated by the funding for a particular piece of design work on a specific OSS. As described above, one designer discussed taking this into their own hands by writing their own funding applications to improve parts of OSS that are underfunded and lack attention, such as accessibility improvements in their own volunteer time.

People with marginalized identities often make choices about which OSS to contribute to based on how welcoming the OSS community appears and how relevant the OSS is to their cultural context. This often happens by way of a friend recommending a specific OSS to the designer and assurances of its safety. These marginalized people want to know in clear terms that they will be valued not only for their contribution, but for who they are, as a person, trying to be better represented in OSS and Technology spaces. Such considerations are somewhat familiar to designers in open source in general, as design and designers are a marginalized function in OSS, as it is often under-valued and under-represented as a core component of building usable (OSS) software.

Many of the designers involved in the study believed that OSS should not be short-changed by missing out on design contributions, because of how design has been largely absent from OSS spaces. As one designer states, “Just because you don’t have lots of money doesn’t mean that you don’t deserve a proper logo/design.” This extends to all forms of design. Our participants contribute to OSS projects and often, designers are frustrated by OSS projects when they do not implement their contributions. This connects back to the core belief that design improves (OSS) software and OSS deserves attention too.