Hey all. In the last couple of Design & UX Working Group meetings, we were formulating on a way of capturing our collective knowledge into a common resource we can build and share with a wider community of practitioners.
This idea has formulated into a prototype knowledge-base site that would be centered around the following five themes:
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Defining design: When we say design, what exactly do we mean? What is the vocabulary behind design, its key concepts, and how this take shape in open communities? Depending on who you ask, everyone seems to have a different perception on this question, and there is probably some truth in all of these different responses. Most notably though, this is helpful to dispel the myth that “design” only means graphic design, making logos and pretty images, etc.
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For the maintainers: If you maintain an open source project, what steps can you take to make your project and community more inclusive and welcoming for design contributions? This theme is targeted for people who want to embrace design for their project, but do not have knowledge or experience in design. This could include activities and exercises to help a maintainer think from the perspective of a prospective design contributor to their project.
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For the designers: If you are a designer looking to participate in open source, what key information do you need to know in order to be successful? This theme is targeted for designers who are looking to enter open source spaces and better understand how open communities typically function. This could include advice, best practices, and/or exercises to help a designer successfully engage in an open project.
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Guidelines & frameworks: Best practices and resources to help “level up” design thinking in a project or community. This could be advice or best practices on how to create common design resources, frameworks, patterns, and/or templates to make design-oriented practices for commonplace in a project. This is different from the last two themes because it is somewhat more advanced. The ideal audience for this content is past the beginner level, but not quite at the expert level.
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Case studies & examples: Theory is great, but sometimes you really just need to see it to understand it. This theme focuses on tools, design frameworks, or other examples from real-world projects and communities. The purpose of including case studies is to help someone move past that challenging step of theoretical understanding and conceptualization, to actually doing it in their own project or community.
You can see the full site and its source code available below. The content license is not yet decided, but presumably will be a Creative Commons variant license.
In the next meeting in January (new time to be determined), we will go through the prototype and continue to map out our goals and vision for this resource. And then hopefully devise a content curation plan if time allows in the next meeting.
Have a great year-end all. 