During the first weekend of February 2020 Open Source Design (OSD) hosted the 6th edition of our devroom at FOSDEM.

FOSDEM is the Free and Open source Software Developers’ European Meeting, a free and non-commercial two-day weekend event that offers all open source contributors a place to meet, share ideas, learn and collaborate. You can learn more about the conference on their official link.

We at Open Source Design have been fortunate to coordinate with them for 6 consecutive years!! 🎉🎉
Like all years we had a great variety of speakers discussing a wide range of topics (from design principles to self-publishing to soft-launches to discussions on using design for the common good).
You can find a full-list below and make sure to check out the links to learn more about the talks and speakers.

Open Source design - Africa
Peace Ojemeh talks about the Open Source Community Africa (O.S.C.A) movement promoting the open source culture within and across Africa. It aims to bridge the diversity gap of the open source culture through advocacy because of potential and great energy coming from the continent.
https://fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/open_source_design_africa/

What are we talking about when we say “open design”?
Manufactura Independente presents an exercise in labeling, presenting terms and trying to define their scope in the hopes of improving the ways in which open design can be explained to others.
https://fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/what_are_we_talking_about_when_we_say_open_design/

Some Excerpts from the Theory of Design in Architecture
Amit Nambiar talk discusses some theories from architectural discourse which attempt to solve problems requiring critical and creative thinking. The talk sheds light on some interesting examples of design challenges architects and planners have dealt with.
https://fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/some_excerpts_from_theory_of_design_in_architecture/

UI/UX Tips & Tricks for developers
Ecaterina Moraru shows us some general UI/UX tips & tricks that will help you design better. Everyone should know the basic principles and patterns of design, and once you understand them you will naturally integrate them in your work.
https://fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/ui_ux_trips_and_tricks_for_developers/

Accessibility in MuseScore
Peter Jonas and Marc Sabatella from MuseScore share the developing team’s experience in making a popular open source program accessible to keyboard and screen reader control. MuseScore is the world’s most popular sheet music program used by millions of musicians around the world, including many who are blind, partially sighted, or who struggle to use a traditional mouse-based interface.
https://fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/accessibility_in_musescore/

Gitflow Design
Diogo Sergio shares with us Gitflow - a git workflow for designers and design work meant to open up the benefits of git for designers. With this approach designers get to take advantage of a git features such as controlled access, review process, feedback system, version control files, preview changes in context with side-by-side diffs, detailed history of changes and more.
https://fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/git_workflow_for_design_in_os_projects/

UXBOX, the time for an open source online prototyping platform has arrived Pablo Ruiz-MĂşzquiz shows us UXBOX - an open source prototyping online platform based on SVG. The team shares the vision and the 2020 product roadmap, explaining the resources that are being committed. The talk goes over the history, has a running demo and invites participants for feedback.
https://fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/uxbox_open_source_online_prototyping_platform/

Using biometric gadgets for express-tests in the UX/UI research
Dmitriy Kostiuk shares with us his work on estimating the user’s physical and mental state with a set of special measuring devices which can be helpful in detecting bottlenecks of the human-computer interaction. Contemporary consumer-grade gadgets targeted at fitness and entertainment are much more affordable and precise enough to be used in the UX/UI comparison. The talk highlights which devices are the most suitable ones for the research purposes in the open-source world (the ones having open-source and GNU/Linux frameworks to access biometric data).
https://fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/using_biometric_gadgets_for_express_tests_in_ux_ui_research/

Beyond the Pile of Knobs: Usability and Design for Privacy, Security, Safety & Consent
Georgia Bullen from Simply Secure shares examples of how we can design, centering the needs of the most vulnerable. The talk presents the problems, e.g. why the UX patterns that make consenting or refusing consent so difficult in practice and why open source security tools are often associated with bulky user interfaces and inaccessible jargon, and share findings from years of working with projects in the Internet Freedom, Digital Rights, Media Justice, Translation, Training, Civic Tech and Development communities.
https://fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/beyond_the_pile_of_knobs/

Jumpstarting your business with Odoo
Jeroen Baten describes the process of discovering the wonders of Odoo when he got the project to write a book about it. His writing tools are Vim, Git, Asciidoctor-pdf and Inkscape. It describes both the technical as the organisational challenges during the writing process.
https://fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/over_asciidoctor_and_generating_publishing_a_book/

File sharing & storage for human rights organizations
Allon Bar and Abigail Garner from Least Authority presents a design research project that looks at open source file storage and sharing solutions for human rights organizations. They present the project, the first phase of our research process, and outlook on next steps that involve adapting open source tools.
https://fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/file_sharing_and_storage_for_human_rights_organizations/

Design contributions to OSS: Learnings from the Open Design project at Ushahidi
Hear Eriol Fox about how the team at Ushahidi tackle systemic problems with how to ‘open source’ a design effort and bring the community along with the ‘on-staff’. Their team has been piloting a series of design events on OSS crisis communication tool TenFour with partners Designit and Adobe. In this session, the speaker briefly covers the history of the project and the main problems attempted to solve. They present the learning and adaptions to their workshop framework and methodology that aims to engage design teams and individuals that are not yet ‘on-board’ with OSS as an ethos or movement.
https://fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/design_contributions_to_oss/

Designing to change it all
Winfried Tilanus showcases the SamenBeter project as example of how design is about much more then user interfaces. It is about designing processes, user interactions and designing the adaptation of the product itself. Check out how they started with designing the change they wanted before starting to think about a product and how it looks in practice.
https://fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/designing_to_change_it_all/

The day ended with our tradition of opening up the stage for anyone who wants to talk about their project in short 5 minute pitches.

The talk selections happened through public voting and we were enthused to see the crowd flowing through our devroom. You can catch-up on the presentations if you missed them and the conversations are still alive on our forum.

Thanks to all speakers and organizers for making this event happen and we hope to be back next year with the same amount of enthusiasm.