This document summarizes John Lilly and Mike Beltzner's presentation on open design at Mozilla. Some key points:
1. Mozilla is a global open source project with thousands of contributors and around a quarter billion Firefox users. Firefox code is about 40% community contributed and has over 8,000 add-ons.
2. Mozilla's mission is to promote openness and innovation on the internet. Their design process embraces input from the open source community through discussion, experimentation, and small teams led by strong contributors.
3. Challenges of open design at Mozilla's scale include managing global implications on language/culture as the audience grows from thousands to millions. Competition in the browser market and
10. But then things got a lot better
Dr. Dobb’s Journal, Jan 1991
& started to click for me...
11. “The great and rapid success of the personal computer industry over
the past decade is not without its unexpected ironies. What began as a
revolution of individual empowerment has ended with the personal
computer industry not only joining the computing mainstream, but in
fact defining it.
Despite the enormous outward success of personal computers, the
daily experience of using computers far too often is still fraught with
difficulty, pain, and barriers for most people, which means that the
revolution, measured by it’s original goals, has not as yet succeeded.”
- Mitch Kapor, A Software Design Manifesto (Dr. Dobb’s Journal, 1991)
20. Mozilla is...
A global open source software project
with thousands of contributors
21. Mozilla is...
A global open source software project
with thousands of contributors
Around a quarter billion users
22. Mozilla is...
A global open source software project
with thousands of contributors
Around a quarter billion users
The maker of the Firefox Web browser
38. Embracing the chaos...
“Fitts’ says bigger
“The URL bar should
buttons are better.” “What’s with the
be removed.”
dirty house?”
“There should be
“My mom doesn’t “Nobody uses the “Add support for
a preference setting.”
understand tabs.” ‘Go’ button.” BitTorrent.”
“OpenID is the future!”
“That’s great!”
“Everyone uses tags,
not bookmarks.”
“I love tabs!”
“The profile manager
should be redesigned.”
“Add support for
Ogg Vorbis.”
“That’s awful”
“Closebuttons are better at
the end of the tabstrip.”
66. match title & url
the original idea
tweaked the
“frecency”
based on feedback
adaptive learning,
new layout to
improve visual
scanning
came out of the woodwork
- design in OSS projects has a pretty bad reputation
- going to be talking mostly in a UI design context
- but the lessons I’ve learned are really for any sort of design
- code design
- marketing campaign design
- IA design
- this is the goal
- for the past 2 years, I’ve been working towards this chorus
- not all the way there yet, but I have a strong sense of how to get there
- but these are the three things I think you need to remember
- but these are the three things I think you need to remember
- some bugs (like the “restore support for MNG”) get a lot of noise
- this can be terrifying
- millions of lines of code, millions of minute details (sound familiar to designers?)
- everyone has an opinion on design
- there’s a lot of misinformation
- watch out for things like “user testing would tell us”, “Fitts’ Law says” or “My mom ...”
- closebuttons on tabs
- how do you decide when arguments are both convincing (and vitriolic!)
- you can see how this design was added to over time
- no clear vision on how to support the user task
- typical OSS design
- 2000 people with editbugs
- 400 people with CVS access
- (still quite a lot!)
- module ownership & peerage system
- benevolent dictatorships
- Mike Connor (our benevolent leader!)
- blog posts like alex faaborg’s
- talk about it in bugs
- dispell myths and get people interested in learning good ways of doing design
- don’t pretend you’re the only one with the answers
- give out whuffie and credibility
- identify weak arguments: “My Mom”, “Fitt’s Law”, “More usable”, “It’s always been this way”
- Gavin Sharp revised the Mozilla OpenSearch format
- Mike Connor added JSON support
- Joe Hughes worked on the UI presentation
- community quickly updated searchplugins
- but these are the three things I think you need to remember
- set plans and clearly state design principles
- our PRDs with prioritization & schedules are out there for people to see
- feature brainstorming list helps people organize their ideas (thousands of edits, 2 instances of vandalism)
- module ownership model
- allows debates to occur in smaller groups
- final decisions should always be checkpointed with everyone
- empower with design specifications that inspire the “commander’s intent”
- use your resources to leverage the community
- get your community to provide the data
- got eye tracking research and cognitive data modelling for closebutton problem
- you own the product
- you carry the responsibility
- you are the benevolent dictator
- but these are the three things I think you need to remember
- if you love ‘em, set ‘em free
-
- introducing Mozilla Labs!
- slew of people now excited about figuring out how to add social features into the browser
- ties back into listen and lead
- but these are the three things I think you need to remember
- but these are the three things I think you need to remember