Designers speaking about success: Success via acknowledgement, inclusion and collaboration

[Erioldoesdesign]

Positive acknowledgment was a big motivator for not only success but also generally helping the designers involved to have a good time contributing to the OSS. Overall positive comments were given to all designers across the duration of the diary study. Some of these comments were specific to designs, and some of the comments were directly from users who were excited about improvements to the OSS as a result of involvement in usability testing and design.

These comments demonstrate the type of positive feedback designers receive that encourages them to continue. “We received positive feedback and met with community members who were very excited about the software” and “The landing page was well received by the public”.
The following comment is also paired with another indicator of "success" which is receiving a publishing or live date for their design work. “I received a very positive response on the logo designs I've worked on for the OSS project and dates are planned for the launch of new logos”.

An additional benefit to complimenting and acknowledging design’s positive influence on OSS is that it can make other roles and functions in the OSS interested and invested in the design process. “The Django team complimented the website I did. Which made them interested in my work”. One designer explained this indicates potential for more design collaboration and involvement from this team in the future in the form of synchronous design collaboration. “Yes, I like talking with (users) and engineers/developers while mocking up our discussion in front of them”.

There were also examples when designers or design (as a practice) were misrepresented or designers were not included in some OSS processes. “Participation in a conference was mis-represented and was upsetting”.

Two designers spoke of being excluded from GitLab as a platform which meant they could not participate and affected their contributions and mood towards the OSS. “I hate GitLab, it is confusing and the team did not put me as developer yet” and “it's my first time using GitLab for documentation. As a designer I never need to use tools like this.” Ensuring that designers are onboarded onto platforms and tools in an empowered way is critical so that they feel included in the project. This can be done by making them aware beforehand what access permissions they will have to tools, and the OSS developers and maintainers asking designers about their knowledge levels ahead of onboarding. This is further explored in the following general comment about a designer that doesn’t feel like part of the community and the difficulty in being somewhat of an outsider. “I noticed if you are not part of a community it is difficult to contribute as a designer”.

To compound the difficulty with inclusion and collaboration in OSS, designers often struggle to assert themselves in collaboration situations where developers, maintainers and users speak at length about particular issues or topics, and the designer doesn’t always feel empowered to steer back to what they need to make their design contribution successful. “Should I let someone keep talking passionately, because it was kind of derailing the meeting? Their opinions were valid, but only semi relevant”.