Strengthening the Design community and the Open Source Ecosystem by faciltating collaboration together and bridging the design gaps in OSS
Project Overview:
‘Open Design’ aims to learn how, as a design community and an open source software community, we can increase and sustain meaningful design contributions to open source and advocate for designers embracing OSS as part of their learning and careers.
Above: Open Design at open up global summit 2019
The first phase of Open Design was funded by Adobe’s fund for design while I was Design Lead at Ushahidi. Official partners of the project included Designit’s Germany offices of Berlin and Munich and Adobe XD. The first phase of Open Design sought to create accessible processes for designers to collaborate and contribute to Ushahidi’s humanitarian open source software. Using Ushahidi’s OSS tools as a testing ground for developing process and tools and understanding some of the driving forces from both the design perspective and the OSS project perspective.
Above: Open Design website and brand
Open Design comprised primarily of 3 months of research, planning and preparation and then 3 months of practical on-site executions and reporting.
In the research, planning and preparation I completed desk-based and interview research that informed a workshop framework, core principles, witness inclusion and design documentation and files ready for open source design contributions. Part of this work included a website and brand identity for the project which was built collaboratively with Designit.
Above: Designers for good working together
I worked within Ushahidi’s TenFour repository triaging and structuring issues in ways that could entice designers to that project and those issues/tasks.
Above: TenFour file for open source designer contributions
In the practical sessions, I delivered two on-site workshops in Bangalore, India for Design UP! 2019 and in Taipei Taiwan for Open Up Global Summit 2019. These workshops allowed Open Design to better understand how the developed processes and frameworks worked within the real world and offered valuable insight into how to proceed with further Open Design efforts.
Above: Open Design at Design UP! Bangalore 2019
Above: Open Design at Open up global summit Taipei 2019
Open Design is currently seeking funding/support for the next phase of work and is maintained through Eriol and other supporters efforts currently. Please get in touch on opendesignis (at) gmail.com if you are interested in funding or supporting Open Design.
Projects and people that offered Open Design valuable insight along its journey include:
Core team Jay Messier Thomas Kueber Abigal Mak Justin Scherer
Supporters The Open Source Design.net team and community The Simply Secure team The Open Source community Africa team Open Ideo: Nathan Waterhouse Simple.org: Daniel Burka Global Virtual Design sprints: Robert Skrobe Circular economy & Design: Zablon The Hague Hacks team Open Up Global Summit conference Design UP! conference Sustain OSS Design & UX working group
You can see videos of talks given about Open Design at Open Up Global Summit in Taipei 2019, Open Source Festival Africa in Nigeria 2020 and FOSSASIA 2020 online.