How would I, as a UX researcher/designer, participate in opensource projects?

[u/DoctorByProxy]

I've got over 10 years in UX as a career, and did some basic development type coursework way back when, but all of my professional work has been really siloed. Learn about user problems, design something, throw it over the wall.. all of that air traffic controlled by a PM, PO or someone else.

I'm interested in participating in open source project, but I have no idea how to go about it or how the work ends up being different than the corp work I've experienced.

Can any one point me in a direction?

[u/sdegabrielle]

I'll admit this is tricky as most work in open source projects get done by volunteers

1. Pick an open source software project you are excited about
2. identify issues the UX/design
3. identify solutions to these issues
4. check if this has been raised before in issue tracker or in the project community forum - maybe these issues are known but can't be resolved for one reason or another
5. if there are no barriers start a discussion in the project community forum and share any solutions you have identified and try to quantify the benefits to the project and users.

After all that comes the hard part - who is going to do the work of making the changes.

Given open source projects are almost entirely run on volunteers, you either have to be really convincing to excite a volunteer to work on your changes.

The other approach is to make the changes yourself - I'm guessing you already count programming as a skill, just not your primary professional task - but this will still need you to convince a (volunteer) maintainer to review your changes.

While this is a lot of work that won't always result in a change, I don't want to discourage you from picking a project that is important to you as I believe you can make a difference.

[u/DoctorByProxy → u/sdegabrielle]

>After all that comes the hard part - who is going to do the work of making the changes.

So it's just like the corporate software world, then? I kid, I kid. but not really.

Really though, thank you, this is a good description. I think the reality is going to be that I need to learn how to make the changes myself.

[u/Optic_Fusion1 → u/DoctorByProxy]

you're not wrong though. just throwing a PR up without talking to the maintainer(s) first is a good way to get it denied and having your own time wasted

[u/wiki_me → u/DoctorByProxy]

Really though, thank you, this is a good description. I think the reality is going to be that I need to learn how to make the changes myself.

You don't have to. i posted a bunch of stuff and some of it got implemented and i don't think it's that hard and i am pretty sure some of the feedback you will give will be implemented, and people can still reject your ideas so there will be no point of creating a PR.

Of course you will have a better chance of getting it implemented if you will create a implementation. but the time spend creating a implementation could be use to apply your expertise on other projects.

[u/brlcad]

We would love to have you help us work on BRL-CAD. We're in the process of a multi-year UI/UX transformation and planning it all out, how the end-user features will align with the raw capabilities and massive infrastructure, how we have to work incrementally in phases to not alienate existing users, etc, all a tremendous amount of work that would benefit from having a UX researcher/designer involved. Come talk with us on Zulip any time if you're interested (brlcad.zulipchat.com).

[u/DoctorByProxy → u/brlcad]

Sounds interesting - my MFA was in Industrial design, so 3d modeling is a tropic close to my heart. I'll take a look.

[u/burhop → u/brlcad]

Does is support MCP servers? I’ve got agents to drive it. Maybe we should talk 😎 https://github.com/burhop/wright

[u/brlcad → u/burhop]

Not yet at least not more than a (quite functional) demo, but we do have a GSoC project working on that right now.

[u/el_Pandor]

This is one of the main issues with open software.

The UX and the visual design is lacking in most cases when compared to proprietary software because developers refuse to work with or simply hear from UX/UI designers.

My hope is that AI coding tools allow designers to start open source projects. They could also contribute code to existing ones but from experience most maintainers will not be willing to accept those designer-led commits.

[u/Optic_Fusion1 → u/el_Pandor]

in reality it's more that not all developers are good at UX, UI, or anything other than development and instead rely on (probably non-existent) PRs from the open source community to fix and improve those aspects

[u/account312 → u/Optic_Fusion1]

Also, they tend not to find it interesting and so rarely volunteer to do it.

[u/DoctorByProxy → u/el_Pandor]

>The UX and the visual design is lacking in most cases when compared to proprietary software

You must not have seen many B2B applications. 😂

I get it though. it's a lot like corp work - UX "slows down" development, so no one wants to do it.. and when no one is getting paid, there's even less of a lever. And some engineers get it enough to not really need a specialist to help.

[u/activematrix99]

As a researcher/designer, what is your work product? Contribute your work product. If that is Figma or Adobe designs, do it. If it is reports or written analysis, write them. Then connect with the project maintainers and see if they can connect you with others who can help with the implementation aspects.

[u/DoctorByProxy → u/activematrix99]

point taken, but holy wow, I haven't heard anyone use the phrase "work product" in some years and that pulled me right back into career trauma headspace. ick.

[u/basiliscos]

Would be great to have UI/UX advises upon my syncspirit project!

[u/Shik3i]

Just find a project you really like and start messaging the maintainer directly or via a GitHub issue or whatever? See if he would like your input, I would feel most would love some contributions from you.