The long cycle of communication in OSS #32
Erioldoesdesign
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As explored in the success sections, the communication cycle was a large and recurring theme for designers in OSS.
Communications take a "long time" (between one week, which is described by designers as not long and up to four weeks which is described as long) going back and forth between designers and developers. “I spent quite a lot of time bouncing back and forth on clarifying the designs among the project team, the liaising designer I work along with for this project, and our supplier.” There is a common belief among designers in our study that developers are "busier" and doing "more important" work than others in the OSS projects. “The design team usually responds fast, developers take a bit longer to respond because they're working on more things”.
Designers made efforts to streamline and make communication go more quickly and tried to ensure designers put across the meaning, purpose and process of the design. “I also knew that my suggestion was accepted on improving the work process and I have to work on creating the new workspace on Notion now in hopes that this will speed up the communication process”.
Even with designers making efforts to communicate frequently and clearly (using explanatory documents etc) there are still challenges around who and how many maintainers/developers/OSS project people needed to be included in decision making. One designer detailed the number of people involved in agreeing “Generally, there has to be an agreement amongst the team (it's mainly 3 of us) on implementing a solution.” Another designer detailed some of the implicit or inherent hierarchy within OSS projects “(Communication has been) not too good, but more related with different scales (level of importance in the OSS) on making decisions”.
It was not uncommon for designers in the study to spend over half their time in a week on communications and in some cases, the entirety of their time contributing to OSS was spent on communications. “A hundred percent (of the designer's time was spent on) communication. It's okay, I guess.”
Some of the reasons communication stalled makes logical sense, such as national holidays or time zone shifts. Since OSS may be volunteer-led there are times when designers and developers are working on OSS over holidays and weekends. It is expected communications will pause over generally established periods of rest, but it is still noted by designers when feedback was given in good time during these rest periods. “Communication was swift but due to time zone differences and holiday season, it took a few days for some to reply”.
In the study, we noted that one designer indicated when a developer/maintainer asked multiple designers for the same task. This is a way that OSS projects ensure that a necessary or time sensitive task gets done rather than implying that a specific designer can’t do the task. “Sometimes one single project might need to reach out to several people for the same task”.
The designer that spoke of this in our study understood that asking multiple potential contributors is commonplace within OSS culture. Without this cultural understanding designers may think this approach to be rude.
Similarly, another designer spoke about how specifics of OSS and the function performed: coding, development as well any specific domain purpose of the OSS (e.g. Sciences, analysis, AI etc.) can be misunderstood, and knowledge taken for granted. “I encouraged someone to write up more clearly what work they had worked on because I was having trouble understanding what they were saying”.
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