A presentation at Open Source Community Africa Festival 2020 in in Lagos, Nigeria by Abigail Makolo
Designers Can Be Open-Sourcerers Too! Abigail Makolo eHealth4everyone @abigail_mak
Loves ice-cream and photography Abigail Makolo eHealth4everyone @abigail_mak
Designing for Open Source
Wait, what is Open Source? FOSS?
Flexibility Peer-review Open source is something people can read, modify and share because its design/code is publicly accessible. Collaborative participation Transparency Open-exchange FOSS is Free and Open Source Software. Open Source Festival 2020 Community-oriented development
“Most designers don’t have a clue about open source.” - Eriol Fox, Ushahidi
No clue about open source The tools/processes can be intimidating They don’t see the benefits
As a Designer Conduct UX reviews of existing projects Design sketches, mockups to improve usability Conduct user research and usability testing for the project
As a Designer Develop a style guide for consistent visual design Create branding designs (e.g. new logo) Create walkthrough videos for the software
As a Designer Improve the project documentation Rewrite design issues as design challenges Look out for opportunities for design contributions Visit For more ideas on ways to contribute
Growing as an Open-Source Designer Opensource.guide
“Let’s make open source software beautiful and more usable!” - Abigail Makolo
Thank you! Abigail Makolo eHealth4everyone @abigail_mak
Open source is beautiful! It makes powerful, potentially life-changing software free and open to all. However, open-source software has been largely associated with poor user experience and aesthetics. Could this be because designers are not interested in contributing to free software? Actually, “Most designers don’t have a clue about open source,” says Eriol Fox of Ushahidi, a non-profit social enterprise that creates humanitarian, open-source tech tools. And there’s no doubt, personally I was not aware for the longest time in my tech career that designers (and people from other fields other than coding) could contribute to open-source software almost as much as programmers do. Why should you contribute to open-source as a designer? What opportunities are open to you as an open-source designer and what help is available to help you get started? These questions and more will be addressed in this talk. It is open to everyone, including non-designers and non-coders.
Here’s what was said about this presentation on social media.
for free. You
can too.