I was recently asked how great open source projects can have great design. It sounds like a complicated problem: designers and developers live in two worlds that rarely meet. What can we do to bring better design to our ideas?
As a developer, the desire to work on open source projects comes from a drive to share a particular idea or do some good via code. In doing so, I’m achieving my personal goals, and it feels great.
But how do I convince someone else to work towards my lofty and worthwhile dreams? For free? The same way we convince other developers to work on open source with us: ask for help. There’s a perception that designers aren’t interested in contributing to open software projects, which is wholly false. Any time I’ve wanted help with a project, I’ve had no trouble finding great designers ready to step up for a good cause.
Don’t Be Afraid of Expertise
As much as we like to believe we’re all superheroes, we can’t do everything. Just like you wouldn’t ask a great designer to build a complex Rails app, you’re probably not the one best suited to create a user experience masterpiece. It’s only natural to have multiple participants who are masters of various disciplines.
The process by which we all contribute to open source projects has been normalized over time: find something we can fix, fix it, and send along our changes. Unless you’re a project owner or core contributor, you follow this pattern 99% of the time. Why not just have designers drop a Photoshop file in our mailbox and call it a day, right? Designers aren’t Photoshop factories, wanting to merely spit out static images all day long. They don’t want to do that any more than we want to churn out code and never see it again. The process of creating a design that fully meets the needs of a project requires more than just telling a designer what you want, and handing off completed files.
Stop: Collaborate
Instead of asking for a homepage or a few mockups, invite them to become a core member of your team. Explain the concept of your project and use it as an excuse to get feedback from someone who knows nothing about what you’re doing. Then let them help you make it better. In a recent article reflecting on Google Wave’s rocky conception, Dhanji Prasanna, a former Google engineer, related his experience on the necessity of involving designers:
You need the same mix of experienced talent working in the UI as you do with traditional “serious” stuff. …taking design seriously is not about having a dictator fuss over seams and pixels. It’s about giving it the same consideration that you give any other critical part of the system.
At Bearded, our process revolves around designers and developers working in concert for the duration of building a product. Rather than one party handing off to the other with no feedback, developers offer feedback on project specs and initial design concepts, and designers are able to constantly review, respond to the project in progress, and offer new ideas and suggestions after seeing a concept implemented. Some features from the original designs don’t make it to the final product, and new features proposed by developers get added and designed along the way.
Every project we make is stronger for having feedback from all parties throughout the process. Find help early, and make having a designer the standard going forward.
Designers, You’re Not Off the Hook
Convincing developers to collaborate is only half of the battle. One important aspect of working with open source software is version control. The good news is that it’s not that hard! There’s some great articles targeted at teaching a designer-centric workflow involving git, a simple and popular version control system:
It’s a lot to take in, but it gets better. You don’t have to use the command line; there are great GUI utilities for all the major platforms to make using git easier. If you’re on a Mac, give Tower a shot, or try one of the many other git client available. Windows users, check out this list.
It’s Dangerous to Go Alone! Take these.
Some days, you won’t be able to find a designer. But all is not lost!
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Start with a Good Foundation
Twitter Bootstrap is great. Really, really great. It provides a solid visual foundation that is a suitable starting place for most web projects.
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Get Inside Their Head
The Non-Designers Design Book comes highly recommended as a resource for the technically minded to get a handle on the thought process that goes into a design.
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Learn the Language
Use lynda.com (and, you know, Google) to strengthen your HTML and CSS skills. In order to facilitate communication, both designers and developers need to have a common language to speak. The combination of HTML and CSS does an adequate job of bridging that gap.
Make New Friends
The benefits of great design are too numerous to expound on. A poorly designed project will turn away new users left and right, while great design will draw in larger crowds. Seek out help from designers among your friends and acquaintances, or look online1 for willing partners in crime.