Open Source Design

Help fund the recordings of talks for FOSS Backstage Design 2026

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

FOSS Backstage Design took place for the 3rd year in a row to bring together people working on the user experience of open source software.

FOSS Backstage Design is the place to meet designers, UX-experts, OpenSource enthusiasts, product managers and people generally interested in UX, accessible design and usability.

This year however, was harder to raise sponsorship for the event. As such, the cost of the video recordings for the talks on the day were at risk of not being funded.

The folks at Plain Schwartz, who are organizing many FOSS events stepped in to take on the cost of recordings of talks.

Open Source Design covered a part of the venue and catering costs for the 2nd and 3rd year in a row, but as a community run project on donations we cannot cover the 3000 Euro amount for the excellent level of professional recording, audio and editing that is offered by the team that Plain Schwartz hires.

Please consider donating what you can to help Plain Schwartz recover the costs to record the talks here:

https://opencollective.com/opensourcedesign/projects/foss-backstage-design

You can look forward to seeing the excellent talks about open source software and design related topics, from Blender, Mastodon, AWS and KDE in the coming weeks on their YouTube channel soon as well as an article write up here on Open Source Design’s articles section too!: https://www.youtube.com/@PlainSchwarzUG

FOSDEM 2026: wrap up

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

FOSDEM 2026: Open Source Design Devroom wrap up

Introduction

The 12th edition Open Source Design devroom in 2026 ran for a half a day on Sunday 1st of February from 13.00pm until the end of the conference at 17.00pm with 8 talks. Most talks had a good/full turn out of audience numbers in the room, even right up until the end of the day on Sunday, which is typically when many folks start travel home from Brussels.

Each talk followed the same format as years previously, 20 minutes each with 5 minutes for questions, and again, many talks could have been much longer and delved into the details and nuances of topic like security, privacy, supply chain safety, design systems and collaboration processes. In recent years we’ve applied for full days of a devroom which would either mean longer talks from some speakers or more speakers. This year we received over 30 talk proposals. Which have their speaker and OSS project information anonymised so that the core maintainer team can vote on the quality of the topic and mitigate bias towards familiar people and OSS projects. We only received a half day in 2026 which means shorter talks and less speakers but as the interest for open source design grows we’ll continue to apply for more time and attention to the varied and broad aspects of design in OSS.

All the talks were recorded and will be available on their individual pages on the FOSDEM website. https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/track/design/ (this website will be archived once FOSDEM 2026’s website is live. When that happens please search for ‘FOSDEM 2026’ in a search engine and look for the archived site)

You can also find every design devroom from 2015 onwards by visiting the yearly specific website of FOSDEM e.g. https://archive.fosdem.org/2015/schedule/track/open_source_design/ https://archive.fosdem.org/2018/schedule/track/open_source_design/ etc.

In 2026 we did struggle to include talks with accessibility as a critical component as well and also endeavoured to platform and prioritise speakers from traditionally under-represented geographical locations but as FOSDEM is an free to attend conference, each devroom organiser, should they want to pay for speakers and volunteers would need to fundraise. This year we were able to use limited funds of $550 USD to pay for two speakers partial travel/accommodation costs. If you’d like to contribute to 2027’s travel funds for FOSDEM and/or other conference costs for open source design related events and conferences you can do so on our open collective funds page: https://opencollective.com/opensourcedesign

The Talks

Designing attestations UI: The Security and Safety of OSS package supply chain - Eriol Fox

Watch this talk: https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/HCQRVT-designing_attestations_ui_the_security_and_safety_of_oss_package_supply_chain/

The speaker worked on a 12+ week project looking at how to express in the varied UI’s of three package repositories (npm, pypi and RubyGems) we can now see more clearly what developers, across skill and knowledge levels, use in package repository pages to make a decision on the security of an OSS located on a registry. These decisions are critical for better understanding trust, value, social proof and the knowledge of secure practices across developers and helps answer the question: how much do developers know about the security of their software supply chain?

You can take a look at the project repository here: https://github.com/ossf/wg-securing-software-repos/tree/main/docs/attestations-style-guide

The UI Layer of Security: What could go wrong? - Elio Qoshi & Anja Xhakani

Watch this talk: https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/YTN9QV-ui-layer-of-security/

The speakers took the audience on a journey into the rarely looked at the parts of technology systems from a security perspective that is the clicking the buttons and interpreting the warnings part. A surprising number of real-world security failures happen not because the code is flawed, but because the interface leaves too much room for dangerous misunderstandings. The speakers touch on what the common mistakes are when the people that build and configure technology assume that users are fully aware of risks and nuances involved in operating the technology. This knowledge/understanding gap can lead to critical user security risks.

The speakers draw on their work at Ura with security-critical and open source projects, this talk explores how the user experience itself can introduce or amplify security risks and why these issues often slip through traditional code-focused reviews.

Designing For Trust and Safety In the Age of Predatory Technology - Caroline Sinders

Watch this talk: https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/PRLSR3-designing_for_safety_in_the_age_of_predatory_tech/

This speaker goes deep into what online safety looks like in the age of Grok, misinformation, doxxing, and technology company founders imposing their own views of safety, surveillance, and ethics on their platforms. The speaker is a former trust and safety employee of the Wikimedia Foundation, and an online gender based violence expert with over a decade of experience,. They cover new design patterns, best practices, and product tooling to help achieve safety, security and foster trust for all types of communities online, but especially marginalized and vulnerable ones.

Parts of the talk focuses on how open source design can be a part of the solution space for creating safety, and how transparency, security and privacy should be leveraged for safety online. The speaker finishes with actionable design insights, UX, UI, new types of product design, and design related policy that could be implemented all for safety.

Gephi Lite: We Built a Data Visualization Tool, But We Couldn’t Design It - Alexis Jacomy & Desaintjan Arthur

Watch this talk: https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/UKTJ3V-gephi-lite-redesign/

The speakers talk about Gephi Lite which is a web-based open-source network visualization tool built by a three-person engineering team. After two years of development and a functional application the team had a nagging feeling that the user interface wasn’t working for users. After bringing in Arthur Desaintjan, a design intern the Gephi Lite team were able to address the needs for usable interface fro users. The speakers share how they approached design at a pivotal moment in Gephi Lite’s life—first by stepping back to clarify what Gephi Lite should really be, then by running user interviews that revealed just how far our assumptions were from reality.

Design Systems in Open Source - Andres Betts

Watch this talk: https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/ANP9VX-design_systems_in_open_source/

The speaker takes us through how Design systems evolved their process and how UI graphics are made, full with automation and deep integration. They then contrast this industry view with their experiences of Open Source communities, who are often left out of these design system processes and practices given that OSS are for certain subset of OSS user groups. The speaker then speaks about how using PenPot, for KDE Plasma and how they saw an opportunity to build something unique to develop the Plasma desktop faster and with higher fidelity to user experience standards. The speaker takes us through the implementation at the KDE Plasma Desktop from graphics, colors, typography, graphical components to much more.

You Don’t Need to Be a Designer to Design: Fixing UX in Open Source - Archita Gorle

Watch this talk: https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/Y7HLDE-you_dont_need_to_be_a_designer_to_design_fixing_ux_in_open_source/

The speaker starts with speaking to how Open source thrives on contributions from developers, testers, and community builders, but how design often gets left behind, especially when there are fewer designer in the FOSS ecosystem than people who write code.

The good news: you don’t need a design degree do design. You might start with ‘I see the problem, but I’m not a designer’ and look for the methods to help, which the speaker then explains some simple, practical design methods to identify and solve UX issues in open source projects. This talk focuses on the simple steps anyone can try and how to ask the right questions, sketch ideas on paper, and try them out with friends or community members. No special skills or software needed: just curiosity and a willingness to make things easier for others.

Understanding developer needs - User research in Forgejo - Otto Richter

Watch this talk: https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/EXQFAR-forgejo-developer-centric-user-needs-and-design/

This speaker, who themselves started out on the code/software side of an OSS project and themselves began to engage with user research and UX work when they saw opportunities for improvement in the project they were affiliated with. This speaker helped the audience to understand your OSS users and how that understanding should be an important step of software development. In recent years, many end-user facing FLOSS communities integrated at least some aspects of design into their development. Unfortunately, most developer-centric projects still haven’t started to even think about it. This talk concludes two years of user research in Forgejo, a Git-backed software forge and collaboration platform. Forgejo can be self-hosted or used on a public instance like Codeberg.org to create software together, from sharing and reviewing code to tracking user problems, doing project management and doing design work.

Use eye tracking to figure out usability issues, the open source way - Dmitriy Kostiuk

Watch this talk: https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/FS8F3U-use_eye_tracking_to_figure_out_usability_issues_the_open_source_way/

The speaker dives into the usage of eye trackers to track usability issues in FLOSS. The speaker introduces different eye-tracker tools and process and shows detailed examples showing the different data and information that can be captured by using eye-tracking and what insight that offers to an FLOSS project. Like seeing whether a user looks at written content or quickly uses a search function on a documentation page.

Visualization of short-term and long-term eye tracking data series is explained with sample code for Graphviz and GNU Octave.

What the audience said…

Feedback this year was again, glowing and kind with attendees of talks valuing specifically the focus on critical topics in OSS like security and privacy and not just the highly valued aspects that are expected by designers in regards to the UX and usability, but the growing interest in cryptography and package security. The talks that also welcomed broad participation into design in OSS were highly rated as design can often seem like a practice that can only be done by the trained few, but Archita and Otto’s talks emphasised how design and user research can be invested in many ways but different folks in OSS to the benefit of OSS projects. The designers in the room were energised by the depth in the topics of design systems and eye tracking and after the talks there were many new to OSS designers looking for pathways into contribution to OSS.

if you’d like to send us a review or quote from your experience of the FOSDEM Open Source Design devroom please email us on core(at)opensourcedesign(dot)net - feedback, compliments and critique is how we keep our volunteer energy up year on year and we always hope to improve experiences of people at FOSDEM as best we can.

You can also email us if you’d like to be involved in the Open Source Design Devroom as a volunteer next year. We always need help with the following:

Applying for the FOSDEM devroom and stand in September/October every year Promoting the call for talks to people in the open source design space Helping up develop fundraising processes for travel stipends and raising funds to distribute to speakers and volunteers Communications and liaising with selected speakers ensuring they have their talks prepared and everything they need to attend FOSDEM in Brussels. Volunteering in the Devroom at FOSDEM in Brussels. Hosting the room, Introducing speakers, tech and audio support, ensuring the room is safe and space is monitored and cleanup. Preparing banners, posters and stickers for handing out to attendees.

FOSS Backstage 2025: wrap up

Tue, 13 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

FOSS Backstage 2025 wrap up recap

Open Source Design @ FOSS Backstage

FOSS Backstage in 2025 has now been running since 2017 and FOSS Backstage Design is now in its second year. FOSS backstage is held in Berlin (and online) typically in early March and in 2025 it was held on March 10th and 11th and FOSS Backstage Design was on the 12th of March 2025.

This year, Open Source Design was able to support FOSS Backstage Design by using our community open collective fund to ensure the day had the same venue as FOSS Backstage’s main track. You can find more information about the costs on our Open Collective page as well as discussed in our monthly community meeting and the FOSS Backstage organisers maintained a forum thread in the lead up to the event

As for the decision to spend our funds this way, there were extensive discussions held by the core maintainer team in a group chat we maintain privately from the wider community in order to discuss any matters that would require secure conversations (e.g. so as not to risk leaking login information etc.) There were mixed views on supporting these costs but ultimately, when asked the majority of active core team maintainers for open source design as well as the wider community members asked in Jan 2025 / Feb 2025’s community meetings were in favour of Open Source Design using it’s collected funds to ensure that this event had a venue that was accessible to those that wanted to attend. Offering this funding also allowed us to speak a little on open source design’s mission and goals as a community to the audience in attendance and show public support for any organisation holding meetings, events and conferences that platform design in open source and open source design in the FOSS community.

This articles author (Eriol Fox) self-funded their own attendance to FOSS Backstage 2025 and FOSS Backstage Design 2025 so that they could write this article for Open Source Design’s community and also ensure that Open Source Design Community was represented at the event. Eriol is also part of the Program Committee of FOSS Backstage and has been for 2 years.

Read the recap from the FOSS Backstage conference organisers here

The design talks for FOSS backstage

This year FOSS Backstage not only ran a day of design (FOSS Backstage Design) but also had a number of design talks throughout the main 2 day conference. These talks included topics around the usability of critical civic crisis technologies, how OSS organisations are understanding and building out their design processes for the wider community, the importance of cultural contexts with language orientation, design for command line interfaces and how open source designers are building out community learning resources so that more designers can be onboarded into OSS contribution.

Building Resilience:UX Strategies for Crisis-Responsive Tech by Miruna Muscan

Miruna shares the story behind Commit Global’s legal guidance module, designed from the ground up to address the urgent needs of refugees at the Ukrainian border. Built with inclusive UX principles, The legal guidance tool adapts to evolving needs in real time, making complex information accessible and straightforward. Through live testing, human-centered design, and research on the ground, Commit Global developed a humanitarian digital framework that doesn’t just respond to user needs, but rather it anticipates them. One of the key elements of Miruna’s talk is about how technology that really helps people is rarely the ‘cutting edge’ or trendy technology but rather technology that is user focused.

Watch Miruna Muscan’s talk here

Bridging the Gap Between Designers & Open Source Communities by Nina Rojc, Leia Ruffini, Kola Ojoodide

Nina, Leia and Kola explore the challenges of design contribution in open source projects and the issues faced by designers and maintainers. They conducted a survey with both designers and open source maintainers, as well as in-depth interviews with several designers to get a closer look at their experiences. In the talk they share key findings, including the biggest obstacles designers face—like the intimidating nature of contribution platforms, confusing documentation, and a lack of clear entry points. They then move onto practical strategies to overcome these challenges. These findings then inform work that the team hopes to share widely with the OSS community in order to alleviate some of the challenges identified in the surveys and interviews across the research.

Watch Nina, Leia and Kola’s talk here

Right-to-Left, Left-to-Right: Rethinking Multilingual Design by Batool Almarzouq, Goodnews Sunday Sandy, Richie Moluno

Batool, Goodnews and Richie detailed the importance of careful and considerate design of multilingual technologies. When designers create interfaces without an understanding how these interfaces are used and read in a language with a right-to-left reading direction like Arabic , there will be minor misunderstandings at best and a completely unusable technology/interface at worst. In addition, “default”, english-based text display and critical UI interaction elements can mislead a user (e.g. a ‘back’ button being placed in a top left or left hand side of the screen from left-to-right users). These default placements mean that those reading right-to-left are working harder to ‘figure out’ the logic of left-to-right reading and contexts. This talk is a must watch for those interested in fully inclusive design across languages.

Watch Batool, Goodnews and Richie’s talk here

Open Design Guide by Christoph Ono, Eriol Fox

This talk introduced the opendesign.guide which is a project created and maintained by designers across the bitcoin design community. The purpose of the open design guide grew from the speakers spending time over the years mentoring and supporting designers new to OSS to get into contributing. Both the speakers wished that there were public and comprehensive resources to help them through the mentoring process but writing guides and resources about how OSS works and how you can contribute design to OSS is nuanced and specific to each designer. Most of the problems then, with writing guides, is that a guide written by one designer about their perspective will not be broad enough for the wider OSS community. With the Open Design Guide, AI was used to write the first version and then it was edited, improved and built upon by holding ‘reading group’ community calls.

Watch Christoph and Eriol’s talk here

Designing is for GUIs only? CLI Design as a shared practice by Hartmut Obendorf

OSS projects are used to not having a designer. What would you ask one if you had them available? To look at your Command Line Interface? (CLI) This is exactly what you should do! In this talk, Hartmut goes into depth about how information architecture and conceptual architecture is critical in designing for command line interfaces . This dives deep into the use of ‘experts’ that interact with OSS primarily through prompts in the terminal. The command line is an environment that changes its state continuously, making a good design both important and challenging. Designing for command line interfaces also grapples with the assumption that ‘design’ is not needed, therefore advocating for usability and accessibility in the command line is difficult. Watch this talk to get some great guidance on how to start designing for text-based interfaces.

Watch Hartmut’s talk here

Onboarding Designers into Open Source Projects by Oluwadunsin Emmanuel Omole and Kingsley Mkpandiok

For Open Source Software, developer contributions are essential. While involvement of developers is often thought about, projects are not always prepared to integrate designers. This talk uses CHAOSS, the “Community Health Analytics in Open Source Software”, as a case study, exploring successful strategies used by the CHAOSS Africa design team to create an inclusive and productive environment for designers in open source. We will examine the specific challenges faced when integrating designers into a community primarily driven by developers, such as differing workflows, communication styles, and contribution processes.

Watch Oluwadunsin and Kingsley’s talk here

The design talks for FOSS Backstage Design

FOSS Backstage Design’s day kicked off with three fantastic talks by Martin Keary, Marta Marczykowska-Górecka and Tobias Bernard. All the speakers presented on common design in OSS topics but from their own unique experiences. There are common themes across the talks, from communication across role divides to both designers and developers getting intensely nerdy about their specific domains. The most common thread being that no matter what you’re contributing to the OSS, you’re there because you support free and open software and ultimately want it to be used, enjoyed and valuable to any user.

Achieving Excellence in Open Source Software Design by Martin Keary

Martin Keary aka Tantacrul kicked off FOSS Backstage Design with a talk that spanned both valuable general insights into design in open source alongside the specifics of designing for complex interfaces like Audacity in a way that is incremental and prioritised users’ quick visual understanding of the UI,reducing ‘pop up’ tools and designing more intuitive ways of expressing functions of an interface that matched the human expectations e.g. changing a ‘click to show toolbar to move an audio snippet’ to a click and drag ‘grabbing hand’ icon.. Martin also speaks to designing digital music notations that were accessible and legible both to advanced and new users with Musescore and some very funny moments from usertesting sessions with artist-users trying to puzzle out certain features in Inkscape.

Watch Martin Keary’s talk here

Beyond Looking Good: How To Talk To Developers About Design by Marta Marczykowska-Górecka

Marta, who is Qubes Manager, takes us through some of her experiences working with OSS developers, hackers and activists from the human rights OSS space. Marta speaks about how she advocates for humans in the OSS tech space, talking about how important communication is in the relationships between designers and developers and how to meet developers where they are at in terms of design understanding. Marta gives us practical advice on how to better connect with OSS developers and how to raise your voice as a designer in OSS.

Watch Marta Marczykowska-Górecka talk here

GNOME Design: A Report From the Trenches by Tobias Bernard

Tobias speaks about designing but also being embedded in the Gnome community. Tobias shows how design in FOSS allows it to break the constraints of only being for ‘nerds and hackers’. This evolves into how the design system for gnome applications has enabled both highly usable, accessible and consistent tools across the Gnome ecosystem while also removing the pain of styling those elements being the responsibility of developers. The design system also simplified the app icon design process through well established styles as well. Tobias goes into detail about the way that the design team are involved in projects in Gnome as well as the processes involved, from mock-up and design libraries to the upstream development.

Watch Tobias Bernard’s talk here

The FOSS Backstage Design ‘barcamp’ aka pitch a discussion topic and then vote!

After the talks we move into a ‘barcamp’ afternoon. All attendees had time to write what kinds of conversations and sessions they wanted to see happen for the remainder of the afternoon. These were then voted on and 3 sessions were run in parallel for 3 1 hour time slots. Notes were taken by volunteers and summaries can be found below.

The selected topics are listed below with some sessions having summary notes and others that were more private do not have summaries

You can read the full collected notes hosted by FOSS Backstage .pdf here

The least you can do: The boring changes that improve UX quickly These tasks are easy to do because they are usually separate from complex coding work. Despite their value, they’re often ignored because they’re not as “exciting” as redesigns or new features. Examples of Small, High-Impact Fixes:

Accessibility (a11y) improvements – Increasing contrast between text and background.
Better labelling – Adding labels to icons, ensuring labels are clear and consistent.
Sharpening icons – Small visual refinements that improve clarity.
Tooltips & microcopy – Filling in missing descriptions to help users.
Consistent terminology – Ensuring naming is logical and standardized across the project.

Examples of Successful design work A private discussion where designers in FOSS projects spoke about projects they’ve had experience with and how they would describe and express ‘success’ in those projects.

Measuring design success in a FOSS project This discussion began with defining what success is or can be within any given OSS project. The discussion then moved on to how hard it is to measure success, communication sometimes stops after the design engagement, so designers don’t have access to feedback. This then moved onto values, principles, metrics and ways of gathering and finding feedback and how to see the bias in feedback.

Harmful UX patterns and their alternatives Various reasons for harmful UX patterns manipulating users like deliberate attempts to manipulate users to satisfy a business goal or accidental ones, because there isn’t enough knowledge/feedback. An example of UX pattern mentioned in one of the talks at FOSS Backstage: Creating addiction (getting people “hooked”).

“Marija: there is a dissonance that weaponizes the general principle of “keeping users engaged”, originally as a metric for product quality, which then becomes an aim to create a dependency, or create growth per se to satisfy shareholders.”

What are good starting points for designers moving into product design to support FOSS? New people need a point of contact – Without guidance, new contributors may not know where to start. Promote experienced community members who can help others get involved and small, achievable, and impactful tasks are ideal for newcomers to FOSS. Open-source repos should be structured clearly so contributors know where to report issues and submit fixes.

Find and rank issues for Penpot enterprise adoption This discussion focused on what we believe Penpot needs to implement to become a fully viable alternative design tooling option for ‘enterprise’ level organisations and companies. These implementations needs included: More options for feedback gathering beyond prototype link sharing and commenting, ways to justify/explain design decisions in designs, branching, approval and merging, tracking the history of design changes, fixing performance issues, implementing design tokens and having a lofi, wireframing mode.

CLI Design for Python One Design challenge is that CLIs are so easy to build for individual teams that it is very hard to create a unified appearance. There are different approaches to CLIs in Linux and no enforcement but could it help to push standards compliance to code-checking tools?

Privacy by design & Adversarial personas for FOSS A conversation that centered on privacy and security in FOSS projects and how those aspects are dealt with across tools/software. How can designers, typically side-lined in privacy and securities ‘deeper’ technical work, better understand how to address these concerns from a design perspective while establishing knowledge and standards for design.

How to be nice to each other in our community Private discussion centering on how to be supportive, collaborative and kind in a ‘scarcity’ environment like OSS and Design in OSS.

Authors final thoughts

In the ‘post’-covid (is it over really?) era, where we saw many OSS foundations and organisations struggling to maintain already tightening budgets. Who now faces the onslaught of challenges to sustainability and existence across the rapidly changing (for the better?) tech ecosystem. It feels increasingly difficult to find events and communities carving out the space for the less prominent ways of supporting and contributing to OSS - design (and all of ‘designs’ subsidiary practices aka UI, UX, Usability, Accessibility, user research etc.). Maintaining design’s presence and relevancy to OSS continues to feel like pushing a boulder up a hill (in this author’s opinion). But the more we’re able to come together as a community of designers, around our commonalities as both designers in proprietary commercial spaces as well as open source software spaces, we can support the events and communities that support us, support not only our contribution labour, but also our advocacy and relevancy in OSS.

Credits and thanks

Thanks to the Open Source Design core maintainer team broadly and the wider community for discussing sponsoring FOSS Backstage.

Special thanks to the OSD maintainers and members in attendance Elio Qoshi, Jan Dittrich and Julia Racsko.

Thank you to Plain Schwarz (especially Alex, Paul, Sven & Anne) for organising FOSS Backstage and FOSS Backstage Design.

Thank you to the event photographer Jan Michalko the photos on Flickr can be found here

Written by Eriol Fox Proofread and edited by Jan Dittrich

FOSDEM 2025: Open Source Design Devroom wrap up

Wed, 05 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

FOSDEM 2025 recap - The Open Source Design community is still going strong!

Introduction

FOSDEM 2025 now marks the eleventh year that Open Source Design have applied for, and been able to run a devroom focused on Open Source, Design and the intersection of these.

The devroom in 2025 ran for a half a day on Sunday from 13.00pm until the end of the conference at 17.00pm. Most talks had a good/full turn out, apart from the one at the end of the day (many folks from overseas head home on Sunday evening!). We had 9 speakers total with 8 talks of 20 minutes each with 5 minutes for questions, though many talks could have been much longer and involved topics and Q&A was full of rich insights, perspective and discussions. All the talks were recorded and will be available on their individual pages on the FOSDEM website. https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/track/design/ (this website will be archived once FOSDEM 2026’s website is live. When that happens please search for ‘FOSDEM 2025’ in a search engine and look for the archived site)

One aspect of 2025 that this author is particularly proud of, is that we had a majority (7) people that were femme presenting/women speaking (and two masc presenting/men) speak at the Open Source Design devroom. This is a fantastic ratio in terms of diversity of genders to speak at an OSS conference.

The Talks

Design in 5 mins (okay, 20 mins): ecosystem mapping and user research? what is it and how to do it!

Design in 5 mins (okay, 20 mins): ecosystem mapping and user research? what is it and how to do it! Delivered by: Antonia Valencia Caroline Sinders Caroline and Antonia gave insights and personal experiences of how ecosystem maps and user research have benefited the OSS projects that they have been involved in. Including working on user research across a harassment procedure at Wikimedia.

Thunderbird: Building a Cross-Platform, Scalable Open-Source Design System

Thunderbird: Building a Cross-Platform, Scalable Open-Source Design System Delivered by: Laurel Terlesky Laurel walked us through building out the comprehensive and explorative design system for Thunderbird as well the aspirations the team have for more open source design contributions to the tool.

CLI Design for Designers and Developers

CLI Design for Designers and Developers Delivered by: Harmut Obendorf Harmut took us on a journey through the interfaces that developers and coders use and how to ensure that you are optimising the options at your disposal for making these interfaces the best experience for the specific circumstance.

From Accessibility to Inclusion - Interdisciplinary Design

From Accessibility to Inclusion - Interdisciplinary Design Delivered by: Raashi Saxena Raashi takes us through the differences between accessibility and usability, along with ways in which the two complement and support each other in the design of open source tools and the unique opportunities open source communities have for serving disable user needs.

Piracy, and Open Source: Reimagining Creativity

Piracy, and Open Source: Reimagining Creativity Delivered by: Zekun Yang A fantastic personal account from Zekun on her journey as a designer using the proprietary tools pressed upon us as designers and the opportunities and expectations open source design tooling can have on design and designers. Shining light on the cultural differences across countries and the inequalities present in our tools.

Towards Free-Fair-Patterns: Free to Use, Free from Deceptive Patterns, Fair for All

Towards Free-Fair-Patterns: Free to Use, Free from Deceptive Patterns, Fair for All Delivered by: Lorena Sánchez Chamorro Lorena explores the ways in which we practice design in both manipulative and anti-manipulative ways and how we can strive for better treatment of users using fair patterns and ethical interfaces.

The Engineer’s Guide to Design: Merging Technical and Creative Skills in Open Source Projects

The Engineer’s Guide to Design: Merging Technical and Creative Skills in Open Source Projects Delivered by: Khushi Garg Khushi takes us through their experiences from engineer to designer before and during their time at Red Hat as a product designer. Inviting us to better understand the perspectives all roles can bring to the creation and betterment of OSS.

XWiki: Improving web accessibility with respect to backward compatibility

XWiki: Improving web accessibility with respect to backward compatibility Delivered by: Lucas C

Lucas closes the open source design devroom this year by taking us through his journey in making XWiki more accessible without breaking the backwards compatibility of the experience and technology. Quotes from attendees

What the audience said…

This year, many folks approached the volunteers at the devroom with comments, thanks and support requests. Here are some of those quotes from people that came to the OSD devroom:

“I’ve been coming to FOSDEM for 10 years and the open source design devroom is one of the best rooms”

“I’m looking to change from software development to UX design and I didn’t think it was possible until after this Dev room”

“The open source design devroom is one of the most accessible devrooms in terms of topic. I might not understand design in the same way as designers but I can always understand and appreciate the topics in the room”

“I’ve been coming to the open source design devroom for the last 3-4 years and I’m so glad there are other designers doing work in this space and are excited to speak about it”

If you’d like to send us a review or quote from your experience of the FOSDEM Open Source Design devroom please email us on core@opensourcedesign.net - feedback, compliments and critique is how we keep our volunteer energy up year on year and we always hope to improve experiences of people at FOSDEM as best we can.

You can also email us if you’d like to be involved in the Open Source Design Devroom as a volunteer next year. We always need help with the following:

Applying for the FOSDEM devroom and stand in September/October every year
Promoting the call for talks to people in the open source design space
Helping up develop fundraising processes for travel stipends and raising funds to distribute to speakers and volunteers
Communications and liaising with selected speakers ensuring they have their talks prepared and everything they need to attend FOSDEM in Brussels.
Volunteering in the Devroom at FOSDEM in Brussels. Hosting the room, Introducing speakers, tech and audio support, ensuring the room is safe and space is monitored and cleanup.
Preparing banners, posters and stickers for handing out to attendees.

Oss Projects Here Is How To Make A Successful Job Post

Thu, 09 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

date: 2024-05-09
categories: design open source
author: Aila Araghi

OSS Projects: Here’s how to make a successful job post

Introduction

Hello everyone! If you plan on publishing a job post on the OpenSource Design website, here are a few steps that can improve your post’s coherence and visibility. An effective job post is not just about listing the requirements; it’s about engaging with the community, being transparent about the role, and inviting potential collaborators to join your OSS journey.

Job Post Template

When creating your job post, please use the following template to ensure all necessary information is included:

_id: [Unique Identifier]
layout: jobs
title: [Brief, Descriptive Job Title]
role: [Specific Job Role]
organisation: [Your Organization’s Name]
github: [Your GitHub Username]
contact: [Your Contact Info – Email, GitHub, IRC, etc.]
contributing_md: [Optional Link to Contributing Guidelines]
contributors_md: [Optional List of Reachable Contributors]
org_url: [Your Organization’s Website]
tags: [Relevant Tags like ‘interface design’, ‘branding’, ‘logo’]
status: [Searching or Hired]
compensation: [Compensation Info – Gratis, Paid, etc.]
date_posted: [Posting Date in yyyy-mm-dd Format]

Note: Replace the bracketed content with your specific job details.

Step-by-Step Guide

Step 1: Greeting the Open Source Design (OSD) Community

Begin your job post with a friendly greeting to acknowledge the OSD community and set a welcoming tone. You can add this welcome message in the ‘Job Description’ section of the Job Posting form.

Example:

Hello OSD Friends and Collaborators, We’re thrilled to introduce new opportunities within our community…

Step 2: Contact Information

Immediately after your greeting, provide your contact information so interested candidates know how to reach you. It’s useful to offer more than one method of contacting the OSS project such as multiple email addresses or chat services like a Matrix Channel, Discord Server, or Zulip Chats for example (Not every designer contributor will have access to certain chat services so offering an email is always advised.)

Example:

For any questions or to apply, please reach out to us at:

Email: [email@example.com]

Mobile: [+1234567890] (Optional)

GitHub: [github-username]

Step 3: Role Description

Provide a clear and detailed description of the job role, responsibilities, and the impact this role has on your project. You don’t have to be 100% certain of what you need. Adding a job post for ‘I know we need design help but we don’t know where to start - please help!’ is totally fine.

Example #1:

We’re seeking a dedicated UI Designer to revamp our web application’s interface, enhancing usability and aesthetics to serve our users better. You’ll be collaborating with a team committed to open-source values and innovation.

Example #2:

We’re a new and growing OSS project and we’d like to make sure that our UI is great for all our users. We’re not sure if we should start with research or UI designs but we’re interested in having designers contribute and help us understand how to make our OSS project great :)

Step 4: Requirements and Compensation

List the necessary skills, experience, and any other requirements. Be transparent about the compensation or if you want volunteer contributors. Whether you’re offering financial compensation or not, do mention the other benefits of being involved in your OSS project. For example many designers want to contribute voluntarily to OSS projects in order to gain more experience working with teams of developers for building their own careers. If true, you can mention that designers will get to work with developers or they may get to define their own project structure - any benefits you believe are in your OSS project - a designer would love to know!

Example #1:

Required Skills: - Proficiency in design software (e.g., Penpot, Adobe XD, Sketch, Figma) - Understanding of user-centered design principles - Experience with collaborative design practices Compensation: - $50/hour or commensurate with experience - Flexible hours with remote work options

Example #2:

Required Skills: - Understanding of terminal commands and installation packaging (or willingness to learn!) - Has done User Testing on developer tools before - Experience with collaborative design practices Compensation: - $0 but we offer experience with a complex developer UI - Flexible hours with remote work options - we’ll send you stickers and OSS T-shirt.

Step 5: How to Apply

Detail the application process or the preferred contribution process. Include any forms, documents, or portfolio submissions that applicants should prepare as well as any essential documentation reading or onboarding/community calls

Example #1:

To apply, please submit:

Your updated resume or CV

A portfolio of relevant design work

A brief cover letter explaining why you’re a great fit for this role

Example #2:

To become a contributor, please review our README documentation and our Licence:

please introduce yourself in our community chat/forums

when you’re ready add your design recommendations and enhancements/improvements as their own issues in our repository with appropriate labels (or create labels that help describe your issue/s) If you need help creating your first issue then you can reach out to the maintainers at [contact information]

Step 6: Closing Statement

Conclude your job post on a high note, reinforcing your enthusiasm for the new potential collaboration and inviting designers to apply. Designers are a new and growing role in OSS and often feel excluded or unwelcome in OSS spaces, the more you can do to help designers feel valued as contributors the more positive your interactions will be.

Example Closing:

We’re excited to see your applications/contributions and look forward to the possibility of you joining our mission in pushing open-source and design forward. Let’s innovate together!

Thank You For Reading!

~ Open Source Design Team

Open Source Design milestones over the years

Sun, 11 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Open Source Design milestones over the years

Open Source Design has acheived many things in the 5+ years the community has been running. From running regular FOSDEM Dev rooms for open source design topics to holding local meet-ups and gaining over 600 community members. The community has changed and evolved over the years and its great to look back on the achievements of Open Source Design, so in response to an issue created in 2016 I began to catalogue a few of the key milestones of open source design. There will be events and occurences I’ve missed but here’s a round up of the last 6 years.

👋 As of February 5th 2025 there have been 426 messages on the introduction thread in our forum!

🕚 In February 2025 the design volunteers at open source design return to run another devroom at FOSDEM 25 and all talks (except the last one at the end on sunday!) are packed full with a line out the door at the conference! With over 30 talk proposals submitted to be considers for 2025’s FOSDEM.

🇩🇪 In March 2024, FOSS Backstage run a design specific day in Berlin for design in Open Source! Many open source design members speak and attend.

🔟 In February 2024, Open Source Design run both a stand and a devroom at FOSDEM 24. The stand sees the return of the Open Source Design usability and design clinic where open source designers help projects out with design problems and our 10th year of running devrooms at FOSDEM!

💰 Open Source Design’s open collective donations reach over $10,000.

9️⃣ In February 2023, Open Source design returns to Brussels for the first Open Source Design FOSDEM 23 devroom back in person post-covid pandemic lock-downs and travel complications

8️⃣ In February 2022, Open Source design runs another virtual devroom at FOSDEM 22

🧵 As of July 2021 there have been 548 topics posted on the open source design discourse forum!

💼 As of June 2021 there have been 186 jobs posted on the open source design jobs board!

🥳 686 designers in our GitHub people organization as of June 2021.

💵 Open Source Design open collective reaches over $6k on June 16, 2021!

🇳🇬 🇩🇪 Open Source Design team for Nigeria reaches the most members in a country based team at 20 members and ties with Berlin, Germany! in early 2021.

🎤 Open Source Design community members run a UX clinic and help select talks for the design track at the conference at FOSS Backstage 2021.

7️⃣ Open Source Design community members continue running the design devroom for FOSDEM 21 and the room has 247 people in the room watching talks in February 2021.

🧑‍🚀 Open Source Design community members give a workshop for developers at Open Source 101 and All Things Open In May 2020 and October 2020.

🇹🇼 Open Source Design community members hold an Open Source Design panel at Open Up Global Summit in 2020 in Taiwan and several community member speak on open source design topics.

🇮🇹 Open Source Design community members are invited to speak at Interaction Week in Milan 2020.

⚽ Open Source Design revisits the Goals and publishes them on opensourcedesign.net/goals in 2020.

👩‍⚕️ Open Source Design community members run a UX clinic at FOSS Backstage 2020.

🌍 Open Source Design community members spoke at Open Source Community Africa 2020 and Sustain OSS Africa!.

6️⃣ The open source design community continues their great work at FOSDEM and runs another dev room in February 2020 just before travelis restricted around the globe and events go mostly online.

🏥 Open Source Design run their first UX Clinic at FOSDEM 2019.

5️⃣ Keeping on trend the open source design community runs a dev room at FOSDEM 2019 in february 2019.

🇦🇱 Open source Design second summit held in Tirana in 2018!

4️⃣ The fourth year in a row the open source design community run a dev room at FOSDEM in February 2018.

🗽 First meetup in New York City for Open Source Designers in October 2017.

🇩🇪 Open Source Design first summit held in Berlin October 2017!

🇪🇸 Open Source Design has it’s first regional meetup in Madrid in Spain. June 2017.

🙌 Open Source Design attends and participates in a open source design track at OpenTechSummit in May 2017.

🤦‍♂️ An open source design member gives a ‘funny’ talk at the G23 conference in May 2017. Designers have senses of humor 😜

🌐 Open Source Design community members attend the Internet Freedom Festival in March 2017.

🇸🇪 An open source design community member gives a talk at Foss North in Gothenberg in April 2017.

3️⃣ For the third time there will be a dedicated Open Source Design dev room at FOSDEM in February 2017.

🏦 Open Source Design creates an Open Collective to raise funds March 2016.

2️⃣ Second FOSDEM open source design dev room is organised and run by the open source design community in February 2016.

🇸🇬 Open Source Design community members spoke at FOSSASIA March 2016.

☯️ Code of Conduct published June 2015.

🎉 Website is collaboratively created and launched April 2015.

🐦 Open Source Design joins Twitter! February 2015.

1️⃣ First Open Source Design dev room at FOSDEM January 2015.

🗣️ Conference talks on open source design and sharing resources December 2013.

Mozfest 2021: Open Source Design helps out Simply Secure with a UX Clinic

Thu, 08 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Mozfest 2021: UX Clinic

For Mozfest 2021, the UX Clinic was organised by Simply Secure staff members and others that are part of the community that Simply Secure maintains for designers working in the intersection of design, human rights, technology and open source. There were a number of ‘rooms’ that the clinic visitors could rotate around after ntroductions were given about our experience and interests as designers in the FLOSS space and the Human Rights technology space. There was enough time to rotate to two different ‘clinic helper’ spaces and have a group discussion in 10-15 minutes or have a 1-2-1 (if there were no other clinic visitors that needed help.

Two conversation examples

The space that I (Eriol Fox) helped with had two primary topics that we covered:

Radical Engineers

The topic around how to ask for design help and how, as a person not deeply knowledgeable about different design practices and skills, to better understand what you want to ask for.

A community member from Radical Engineers came to ask advice on what kind of designer they needed to look for and what different design ‘job titles’ can mean.

They were really struggling with how to ask for what they wanted in a quick and concise way while navigating the ever growing number of design job titles and terms! After discussing what they needed we talked about a particular kind of designer that can do ‘Motion graphics’ which can be part infographics and visulisation skills with the skills of being able to animate and make those graphics and visulisations come to life. We spoke about the differences in designers and graphics creators skill sets and tools they use to create what the Radical Engineers wanted, which included a conversation about the prevelance of proprietory tools like Adobes tools in order to acheive design work like this and how there are still viable open source alternatives which are about SVG and code based animations. I reminded the Radical Engineers of the dominance of proprietary tools in designers lives and how there will be some designers that can create what they need using OSS tools but perhaps they can consider the time scales that they needs this work to include those designers time and support to learn about OSS ways to make motion graphics in the case that the designers that are interested are used to proprietary tools.

Digital Grassroots

The second conversation we had was centred around mentoring and methods for mentoring in OSS that have worked in the past.

A person who works at Digital Grassroots came in to ask about how they can grow and create a community feeling around mentoring and how to encourage participation in broader mentoring conversations.

The advice that I (Eriol) gave around mentoring is how important it was to grow an authentic relationship between the mentor and mentee and to encourage mentee to mentee communication and support networks too. I’ve found when mentoring OSS technologists around design considerations and open source design contributors the best way to support these individuals is to talk about what they are doing with technology, design and OSS but also talk about the other things they are passionate about and thinking about as the build their tech and contribute to OSS. Our lives as people are not as removed from the work (both paid and OSS volunteer) as we think or hope and being abe to acknowledge this as a mentor and making it clear the mentee knows you value their health and growth makes for a relationship based on care and empathy. This in turn, helps the mentees to extend the same empathy and compassion to the people that use their technology tools and OSS.

The other helpers in the Mozfest 2021 UX Clinic had conversations around accesibility, usability and inclusion across various OSS technologies and human rights projects as well as specifically giving UX feedback for a wildlife preservation photography website. Going over flows for uploading photos and providing geographical information and metadata, as well as editing the photos.

FOSS Backstage 2021: Open Source Design track support and UX Clinic wrap up

Mon, 05 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

FOSS Backstage 2021

FOSS Backstage approached the Open Source Design community in late 2020 to help out with the design track curation of thier event. They saw design as an increasingly important aspect of open source and wanted to first promote and gather more design talks and sessions as well as ensure the design sessions that were selected were well thought out and had feedback from designers within the open source world as feedback.

As Open Source Design, we helped go through the talk submissions for the design track of FOSS backstage. We looked at talk pitches anononymusly to reduce bias and advised the conference organisers whether talks looked ready to the conference or if they needed further context or information based off of the attending open source design community members experience.

Then then planned and agreed to run a ‘UX clinic’ for the attendees of FOSS Backstage 2021. Open Source Design had previously run a UX clinc at FOSS Backstage in 2020 (just before travel was restricted for Covid-19) and at other events including FOSDEM and Mozfest.

The format of a UX clinic is flexible depending on who attends and asks for clinic help and who is there to help but the basic set up is:

Agree with the conference or event about how long a UX clinic can be run. UX Clinics don’t have to be restricted to any time frame and is largely dictated by what the conference can support and what the design volunteer ciic helpers can offer time wise. For FOSS Backstage 2021 we agreed to have a 2- 3 hour long UX Clinic session that was open alongside other conference talks and had a casual, drop in atmosphere.

Ahead of the event, we reached out to our community of open source designers and ask for volunteer clinic helpers. These are the people that will be offering advice and suport to clinic vistors. These volunteers let us know their availability across the time the conference were hosting us and added their ‘availability’ to a collaborative shared spreadsheet so the person managing the UX Clinic could see who was going to arrive at what point and what kinds of skills and advice they are happy to offer.

We had a dedicated open ‘room’ on the online event platform that FOSS Backstage 2021 had with the ability for private ‘breakout rooms’ if needed. It’s important to establish a space (in-person or online) where people who want to visit the UX clinic can approach the clinic helpers. People approached the ‘reception’ virtual room or table where they could ask questions about what kind of help is on offer and who is helping out. The private online rooms or in-person’ side areas’ away from the main ‘reception’ or ‘sign up space’ help to value confidentiality and privacy of the people that are requesting help from the UX clinic.

And once open, with your design clinic helpers the UX clinic is opena nd ready to help folks! We usually stick to a 10 minute clinic help consultation with the option to extend if we have anough clinic helpers and time as well as not limiting the UX clinic to topics around UX! (User Experience).

Over the years we’ve helped with UX, but also with how to talk to other OSS contributors and maintainers about designers beginning to contribute, about usability, user testing, workshop planning, including your users in the designing of your OSS software and all things visual design like icons, logos, identity and brand and much more!

At FOSS backstage we had a number of small conversations about desinging in the FLOSS space and how designers navigate the complexities of FLOSS and design and then we focussed in as a group to help an attendee who was working on an OSS tool for developers that allowed them to manage the visual code editor space in a number of interesting and flexible ways. We talked about how this kind of interface (not unlike the terminal or other code editors) could be made more accessible using usability and accessibility standards that many designers use in their day to day work or contributions. These included pieces of advice like not relying on a particular colour for a ‘user actioned’ interface change due to different kinds of colour blindness where some people cannot see certain colours distinct from others. We talked about the important of multiple visual indicators that an interface has changed, for example, using symbols or words as well as colours. We then spoke about how to perform usertesting and usability tests and our experiences and best practice as designers doing many different kinds of user tests across lots of different tools and software. This advice included tips like, asking non-leading questions and questions that elicit more than a ye or no response, for example: “Can you tell me about the most recent time that [software or tool] did something you thought was great and really helped you? What happened just before and just after?” We wrapped up our conversation with dicussion on how documentation can be improved by designers being invovled, especially designer with experience and interest in ‘Content Design’ ‘User Experience’ (UX) ‘Information Architechure or Design’(IA) and ‘Educational or Learning Design’. we spoke about how not just this tool had developers asking the same questions about how to use a tool over and over, where they could find the answer in the documentation and how frustrating it is an OSS maintainer to repeat where new controbutors can find answers. We spoke about how this isn’t the fault of the contributors or of the OSS maintainer, but likely about how humans generally navigate complex information (documentation) and how that can be better designed and user tested to be improved over time.

The Open Source Design community enjoyed talking with the folks at FOSS Backstage and hosting UX clinics so if you’dlike support with your OSS conference for a design track or us hosting a UX clinic reach out on: core@opensourcedesign.net

FOSDEM 2021: Open Source Design Devroom wrap up

Wed, 05 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

FOSDEM 2021, like many conferences across the span of 2020 and beyond was very different to previous years and no less for the volunteer team at Open Source Design (OSD). The volunteers at OSD however, are used to communicating asyncronously as we’re reasonably well spread out across the globe.

As open source design has done for the last 5 years, we applied for a devroom at FOSDEM 2021 and succeded! t was then that we reached out to our community and wider for talk submissions ahead of FOSDEM’s plans around the services they would use for both talk submissions and the platforms to hold the conference. We received 17 talk proposals and were able to accept all of them alongside our two usual FOSDEM open source design sessions.

At our most busy time we had over 293 people watching the Open Source Design Devroom which is more than we’d have ever been able to fit in the smaller rooms at the university campus in Brussels!

We had talks from established designers in the FLOSS space as well as designers that are newer to FLOSS which offered a fantastic broad approach to the topics relevant to design in FLOSS.

The talks are listed below, each with a link to the speakers talk outline and profile on FOSDEM as well as their talk video, also hosted on the FOSDEM website.

A brief introduction to Open Source Design by Bernard Tyers . See the twitter here for a round up of this talk here

Communicating CryptPad by David Benque. See the twitter here for a round up of this talk here

Design Bitcoin for Everyone: How we practice and spread open design to make Bitcoin more intuitive and accessible by Christoph Ono. See the twitter here for a round up of this talk here

Redesign of an established Open Source CMS: Drupal Admin UI: Past, Present and possible Future by Sascha Eggenberger. See the twitter here for a round up of this talk here

Why are we scared of user research? by Belen Barros Pena. See the twitter here for a round up of this talk here

UX contributions to pip, Python’s package installer: A conversation about UX contributions with the pip team by Bernard Tyers. See the twitter here for a round up of this talk here

Gain a Superpower in OSS as a Designer Through Code by Kartik Choudhary. See the twitter here for a round up of this talk here

Open design and how everyone can be a designer: Changing the way we design together by Memo Esparza. See the twitter here for a round up of this talk here

Mentoring designers in open Source Software: What I’ve learned mentoring and supporting designers in OSS. by Eriol Fox. See the twitter here for a round up of this talk here

Ways to Contribute to OS Projects Without Writing Line(s) of Code by Sixtus Chizaram Isaac. See the twitter here for a round up of this talk here

Community-accessible EEG monitoring of the user’s mental state in the UX/UI research by Dmitriy Kostiuk. See the twitter here for a round up of this talk here

Latest tech, great! Accessibility, not so much. by Oana Mangiurea. See the twitter here for a round up of this talk here

OSH Communication Kit:Conversation starters for the Deaf and the Hearing by Daniel Wessolek. See the twitter here for a round up of this talk here

Own Your Healthcare Experience: An Open Source Path by Juhan Sonin. See the twitter here for a round up of this talk here

Penpot, design freedom for teams: One FOSDEM and one pandemic after we’re excited to announce that Penpot Alpha release will be launched February 2nd! by Pablo Ruiz-Múzquiz. See the twitter here for a round up of this talk here

The Open Source Designer’s ToolBox: Recommended Techniques and Tools for Open Source Designers by Abigail Makolo. See the twitter here for a round up of this talk here

The user in the cultures of UX design and open source by Jan Dittrich. See the twitter here for a round up of this talk here

You can also take a look at our twitter from FOSDEM 2021 to see live tweets summarising the talks and spotlighting the key content discussed: http://bit.ly/OSD-FOSDEM2021

Our two regular Open Source Design community delivered sesisons are first, an introduction to Open Source Design’s mission and vision and the final session which is an open discussion to ‘pitch your project’ where FLOSS projects can spend some time talking to the devroom attendees about their FLOSS project and asking for design support. This is also an oportunity for designers interested in helping FLOSS projects to talk about what they’d like to offer. See the twitter thread here

Why pitch your project is important to the Open Source Design Dev room As Open Source Design we’ve discovered over the years, that FLOSS projects are interested in design and the wide spectrum of support design functions can offer a FLOSS project but they often get stuck with what exactly to ask for and what is reasonable and appropriate! by offering a chance for FLOSS projects and designers to ‘pitch’ both sides of the partnership gets a chance to communicate what they need, want and can do for each other.

And finally, here’s a screenshot of the Open Source Design team and attendees at the end of FOSDEM 2021! Add the lovely screenshot here.

Beginners Guide to OPEN SOURCE Design via Victory Brown's Hashnode.dev page

Mon, 02 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Repost from Victory Brown’s Hashnode blog page. Victory Brown is an Open Source Design Community member Victory Brown about what it’s like to begin contributing to Open Source as a designer for the first time with advice, tips and tricks on how to make that experience successful.

An inspirational quote from the article at the end is one that most, if not all open source designer can share:

“For someone who had never heard of open source until recently, I’ve found it to be quite addictive, it’s my desire to have more designers join the community, improve and develop the open source space.

The open source community is waiting for what design initiatives can impact the entire software industry. The open source community is waiting for design minds like you. The future is not just Open, the future is Design.”

View the article on Victory Brown’s hashnode.dev here