Background and Objectives

Many years ago I was attending one of the Open Source Design Monthly community calls where a community member asked “Where are designers writing or talking about how they do their open source design day to day?”. To my knowledge, there are only a few academic papers that touch on the day to day of designers contributing to OSS. The process and practice of writing about our design contributions is even less valued than the design contributions themselves, so it is not suprising that there are few accounts of design in OSS.

I later conceptualised a diary study that aimed to understand what the day to day of designers contributing to OSS looked like and applied for funding to support that work. Along with support from OCEAN and Superbloom myself and volunteers structured the diary study, recruited participants and managed the process of collecting data for 10+ weeks.

The objectives of this research was to shine a light on the realities of a lesser known role in OSS and aim to centre the design practices and how they improve and grow OSS projects generally.

Impact

The hope for impact was that OSS projects and funders take note of the ways that OSS projects can benefit from design and designers being involved and put into practice the recommendations based on the research. Secondly, we wanted to kick-start the data pool of ‘design in OSS’ so that academics looking at OSS could potentially use this data to inform their own research and industry improvements.

We found many institutions, and organisations were interested in teh reported outcomes as well as the structure of this research. It confirmed a great deal of ‘suspicions’ in OSS around design and designers and has been a resource that people and organisations point to when looking to back up discussions about design in OSS.

Outputs

  • Research plan, proccesses and consistent updating of research data throughout 10+ weeks
  • Synthesised 10+ weeks of diary study information
  • A 40 page report inclusive of actionable recommendations for OSS projects

New skills

Prior to this project I had never conducted a thourough diary study. I now know what measure to take when planning anextensive diary study and the processes that ensure smooth and timely information collection as well as synthesis and collation into tangible research results.


Cover, contents and internal pages of the 40 page research report

A summary of research aims of the project

A quote from a research participant

Another quote from a research participant

Emergent recommendations based on the findings of the report