What tools do designers use when contributing to OSS? #21
Erioldoesdesign
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We wanted to understand what tools designers were using across their contributions. We discovered that the designers in this diary study the most frequently used tool for design is a word processor, usually Google Docs, and in one case, Libre Office. Primarily these were used for design research related documents and ways to communicate and clarify designs or processes around conducting design work (e.g. usability tests, accessibility reviews). Designers also used Notion and largely described this as a documentation and document sharing tool to use between team members.
The communication tools that designers used were largely dictated by what was used by OSS maintainers or projects. This ranged from enterprise paid tools to OSS communications and work sharing tools. The communication, including video conferencing, and chat tools used were: Slack, Telegram, Discord, Webex, Zoom, email, Reddit/forums, Internet Relay Chat (IRC), Element/Matrix, and Jitsi. In one instance a designer described "picking up the phone and calling a stakeholder". This was described as a transformative process in terms of making decisions and having clear communication with that stakeholder. The same designer also described meeting fellow OSS contributors in person and working together as a critical component to ease both their working relationships and that current design work.
All of the designers at some point used either GitHub or GitLab either to upload images (.svg and other file types) to relevant issues and/or pull requests, or to communicate with developers and other people working on the OSS.
Two of the designers were actively working on code alongside design tasks and typically used Microsoft Visual Studio Code but also mentioned using Brackets and Codepen.
A unique events tool called Hubilo was used by one participant in order to set up and organize the OSS event to which they were contributing. This participant also used another video conferencing tool called Around.co. Other unique tools that were used were Audacity, which is typically used for audio editing work and iMovie. This is likely because there were participants working on OSS projects that dealt with audio and video files, for example needing to upload video content to an events website and OSS that processes sound files.
The design tools participants used were a mix of paid and free proprietary commercial tools, e.g. Adobe Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc), Figma, Canva, Pixlr, Axure RP (a prototyping tool), and some OSS design tools such as Penpot, GIMP and Inkscape. Additionally, accessibility-specific tools were mentioned for tasks like checking color contrast.
Some designers also mentioned using common image browsing websites when building websites such as Pinterest and Dribbble.
Notably, only one designer described using pen and paper as a tool to complete their work.
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