Designers speaking about success: Success via knowing what is a priority for the OSS

[Erioldoesdesign]

Measuring progress on priorities was difficult and one designer spoke consistently of the need for a product or project manager to guide them to the highest priority task. Designers in this study expressed that they had ‘a good idea’ and were confident in their knowledge of what needs to be done and when (especially in terms of the design), either based on information and feedback from the OSS project developers/maintainers or based on user research and feedback. From our researcher perspective, we saw that designers were using established user research and user insight gathering practices in their design work and thorough processes for checking their assumptions.

Designers employed a lot of tactics in order to better understand priorities in the absence of a documented roadmap or plan for the OSS, or when the OSS plan exists in a single mind or collective of OSS community members' minds and is subject to change. One participant described a way to learn from stakeholders: “Not much of a hack, but I've started to get important stakeholders (often project leads) to sketch out their ideas more so that I know what they're thinking”.

Designers commented that there were “no clear roadmaps for implementation” of the OSS and that while issues and meetings presented a pathway, these were not always coherent or indicative of any wider objectives. This didn’t present as much of a problem in OSS projects that had external deadlines, such as events and conferences, and also didn’t present as much of a problem when the designers had some authority and/or were held in high regard within a particular project. See the section ‘Processes: who makes decisions and how are they made?’ that speaks to power and governance for more detail.

Overall, when it comes to design priorities within OSS, many projects are still nervous about making decisions on what design should focus on, as, unless user research or user research has already been gathered and understood as user insight, there is then a question of whose opinion of the OSS takes priority and in what capacity do they trust design changes? As one designer states “Most projects are still very skeptical about making design changes”.