🦊 Who is Eriol Fox?

I am a ‘full-stack’ Designer that works across the user research to UI design pipeline. I utilize my foundational User Research skills into my UX, Product and UI design and I love working on mission driven technology, civic tech, sovereign technology and open source software.

Where I’ve worked

I currently contract for Convocation Research + Design (CoRD) part-time while I look for my next permemnant role. At Convocation Research + Design I work on a mixture of UX, User Research, Usability and User Interface projects focused on Internet Freedom and Open, Sovereign technology.

I was previously…

• Product Designer working on ESPHome and Music Assistant at The Open Home Foundation.
• Senior UX/UI designer, design researcher and OSS product manager at Superbloom.
• Head of design at the Open Food Network,
• Head of Design at Ushahidi

Before then I worked across mobile apps, ecommerce platforms, web services/platforms and freelance since 2008.

You can take a look at my Resume here in (quick) Zine form and also PDF form.

Open Source Maintainance

I’ve been involved in various Open Source projects and initiatives since 2018. Mostly paid roles, many volunteer contributions and some in the spaces inbetween paid and unpaid.

My main Open Source affiliations right now are:

• I am a collective member at Lockdown.Systems. Maintaining Cyd.social OnionShare and other tools for resisting big tech.
• A core maintainer at Open Source Design. Which is a community effort to advocate for design and designers contributing to OSS and OSS understanding design as a critical infrastructural need for open tech. I have helped run a FOSDEM devroom for Open Source Design since 2020.
• Advisory council member over at The Open Technology Fund and The Organization for Ethical Source (OES)
• Penpot Ambassador advocating for using OSS design tooling globally.
• Podcast co-host over at Sustain OSS. Including Sustaining Design & UX working group including our podcast about design in OSS: SOS Design
• Programme committee member at FOSS Backstage Conference in Berlin
• Active member of the Women of Open Source
• Running all manner of design in OSS focused workshops, projects and such that you can see over on my Github

PhD research (on Hiatus)

My PhD thesis was centred on how Designers contribute to Humanitarian and Human Rights related Open Source Software at Open Lab Newcastle. Take a look at my PhD research on my open GitHub repository here. I’m looking for a new institution that would be a home for this kind of research and also funding for this research.

My Career story

For the more narratively inclined, I discovered a love for Free and Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS, FOSS or OSS) after being introduced to the concept a couple of times in my early career and then found my place in OSS when i joined Ushahidi and was welcomed into communities like Mozilla’s Open Leaders, Sustain OSS and Open Source Design. I started contributing as a Designer to OSS projects actiely and advocating for design as an essential part of the critical infrastructural sustainability of OSS with the hypothesis being:

“If your open source software isn’t usable and understandable by average, everyday people then adoption of OSS and the power to collaborate on OSS will continue to consolidate with people that have the time and privilage to learn and use technical skills”

OSS should be accessible and usable to anyone who wants to start with or move over to open source, espeically when it’s foundational to both the free and open internet and the future as it pertains to soverign technology for populations.

I’m fortunate enough to travel to Open Source and Design conferences worldwide to speak about how design and designers can be integrated into OSS. See my Youtube playlist of conference talks here and drop me an email to have me speak, lecture or run a workshop at your conference or event erioldoesdesign@gmail.com

Socials

You can find me online as @erioldoesdesign on various social media and networking sites, primarily bluesky and the Mastodon Hacyderm Instance. I sometimes stream work and OSS contributions over on twitch and upload the videos over on Youtube. If you want to see videos of me speaking at conference here’s where to find those

Check out my interview with Canonical about OSS + Design here