Erioldoesdesign
commented
9 months ago Call has been done - now editing transcript for PII for public publishing
Open Erioldoesdesign opened 10 months ago
Erioldoesdesign
commented
9 months ago Call has been done - now editing transcript for PII for public publishing
Interview Script
Hi there Pink
We’re going to spend some time chatting about your design in OSS experience to date to get a sense of what you have done to date.
Will you be recording video/audio for the diary study or writing?
Written response in the form
Do you want a Zoom room that will auto-record a video/audio for your weekly diary
Don’t need that
In your survey it says you’ve been doing this for X time? How did you start in OSS?
Jan 2021 saw an article about OSS design → design buddies discord. (Community members) name first that showed up - Design buddies discord community showed up in the search → DM → meeting + a meeting with (OSS project 1) folks and when we - very new. Thought there was more structure - needed product management. My role is adding and discussing stuff to contribute → redesign website and aspects of it -error, ux writing.
Wanted to redesign the actual tool was too ingrained in the UI and difficult to know how/why → didn’t have tech expertise to understand.
(OSS project 2) for a while UX research & UI library last year made a small UI contribution - was a table UI bulk order option in the backend admin section of the (OSS project 2) tool.
Current position is open source but not considered Open Source Design - code is open but not considered open? → working since may this year 2022 do all the ux research to prototyping.
How did you start in Design?
remember watching a video about the nngroup doors re. push/pull doors bought the design of everyday things. undergrad in music. didn’t take it seriously as career - pandemic hit not much to do so did more on design - took the San Diego HCI course and finished it and worked on a project and wanted real exp to work with actual people. Thats how I came into open source. Coursera in aug 2020.
The environments are very different between orgs don’t think of it while i work - how do i make my design ops open. my figma designs are messy - we don’t consider if someone is gonna join and contribute - in OSS the design is totally different lots more find a seek who knows about certain parts and right info and lots of hoping your design will go through - the structure is a lot different.
What OSS do you contribute to and participate in?
(OSS project 3) between a few uni’s in Canada
(OSS project 2)
(OSS project 1)
open security tools
How do you decided on a project that they’d like to work on/contribute to?
Depends if it matches my skill set
browse OSD jobs and see if it’s something i can do
not picky about domain and like learning new domains
would like to know if its a 1 person project still active? really old?
sometimes just browsing most don’t talk about design and they’re old like 4-5 years old are hey still doing this work? (OSS project )browsing the forums and posts are all no comms at all and the structure
looking for activity look at github and recent issues → unsure is its a serious project
need consistent project core team comms that’s active looking to develop stuff and not just leave as is?
Could be active but don’t know → look for available active things.
(OSS project 1) has discord by invite can’t just invite anyody closed communication if you want to learn stuff if your a dev or designer
looking for somewhere where a dev wants UI or UX work done
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.
Do you contribute to OSS as part of a paid role, volunteer (free) or both? in what ratio?
right now 100% paid on (OSS project 3) (and I'm in school!) not time to spend on side projects. Previously some volunteer
If you’re paid for OSS how does this feel to you?
Feel like its a go do thing - focus more serious i guess? i get to work with a team and gives me clear task - not always true in paid work but it makes more sense to have a plan. Like to think in terms of what to do next and then next. feels good to be paid for work that we do.
If you’re not paid for OSS how does this feel to you?
Picking what you want to do - don’t get the big grand roles and i like working from the beginning. not paid people have no expectations and little comms. no expectation that we have to get something done and conversations are not focus and not focussed because of unlimited time to spend on a project. it’s a hobby/passion project wanna get things done their way and no person to make top down decisions unless the main contributor has a lot of influence → devolves into cliques and posses (similar to paid work maybe?)
What kind of design do you find yourself spending the most time doing? UX? UI? Research?
Right now lead on the design of a browser extension tool - a lot of UI and usability testing end to end.
What tools and software do you use for your contributions?
Figma
MS teams for the repo - Sharepoint
Google docs for writing stuff
tried using miro but switched to figjam
Miro for card sorting
What kind of processes and communication happens between you and the others that work on the OSS? Who else works on the OSS?
most happens through slack - ux team every week 1 meeting what we’re doing and what needs to be done. Tool specific meetings previously project leads and devs and discuss what we did on the tools that week. Not done as often - only for the browser extension i have direct comms with the dev consistently.
(OSS project 1) uni collab meetings are every 2 weeks but rare to have hard to get stuff done and comms are sparse → don’t know others.
When i want something done i’ll use figma to comment on things i’ve done - figma files as comms with frames explaining what they’ve done.
Communicate specs - reading stuff for devs and detail padding etc. tried to be more explicit before working on a static site heres a design just implement - 121 implementation now - was ok with discrepancies - current tool has a lot of interactions in a small space.
When people respond directly and quickly is the best way. bit ADHD and i don’t get a response quickly i’ll lose interest. i need people to be quick. if it’s free! i might not respond! comments are helpful - ‘it’s good’ isn’t helpful needs to be more but there isn’t a good dialogue with the design. critique that leads to conversations about the wider picture of the tool. for oss someone has tried to fix that piece before and you don’t know that! someone has tried to work on it a long time ago.
Discords and matrix chats work well but they are closed to others - if there was a way to have public chat? discord open? don’t close off to certain people. Let people see conversations is helpful.
Are there other designers or people that are interested in design in the OSS project?
coworkers go to same school - hired as a student - graduated a few months ago - one is a researcher anthropology background. other UX designers are well rounded - came from a library background in the USA with a writing background. got into through content design? the project lead are all professors in digital humanities history & english profs with data sets called (name of project) info about women authors from England in modern period find any female author there. Devs some student and some FT. sometimes they’ll have. serendipity how people find things online? (original in libraries) discovery! switch into digital environment. key info for research - hypertext not useful to used things like google - proprietary search. core research is very UX centric. how does a human do X? knowledge graphs? meta data specialists students get ops to learn
Thinking ahead to when you might stop contributing to the OSS projects you do, how would you like to leave that project? what would the design aspects look like to you?
Never an official leave i just stop for a bit - if it’s forever then it’s forever - no goodbye unless i'm close to them. never leave something half done - i’ll finish and it can be in a state where someone can understand.