This document discusses strategies for bootstrapping user experience (UX) design in open source projects. It provides examples from the Drupal project, noting usability issues found in early versions. The document recommends starting with usability testing to identify pain points and prioritize efforts. It also suggests design reviews, building a design culture by having leadership champion design, and attracting designers by documenting standards and processes. The goal is to make projects more usable, useful, and delightful for users.

1. Bootstrapping UX
design in your open
source project
@RoyScholten – FOSDEM 2015

2. Why bother?
● Still need convincing?
● Usable → Useful → Delightful

3. Quick Drupal retro
● A very big open source project
● Content management system
● Modular, fexible, extensible

4. Drupal 6
● 2008/2009
● 2 full blown lab tests
● Nobody made it through all the
tasks
● Panic!

5. Drupal 7
● 2008/2011
● UX in the spotlight
● Community UX team
● Hired designers for the bigger
vision

6. Drupal 8
● 2011 –…
● More specifc eforts
● Tackling harder problems
● Codifying patterns, guidelines

7. Lets bootstrap…
● Usability test
● Reviews
● Build a design culture
● Attracting designers

8. Usability test
● Gets you data instead of opinions
● Show the pain
● Helps prioritize eforts
● Sets a baseline. The next test will
show you whether things have
improved

9. Reviews
● Ask an interaction) designer to
review the user interface
● There are heuristics (Tognazzini,
Nielsen,…)
● What are the top support requests?

10. Design culture
● Project lead must champion the
cause
● Develop a vision, have principles
● Set priorities
● Allow for design process to happen

11. Build a design culture
● Adapt tools & processes
● Make developers better at design
● Show the work
● Attract designers

12. Tools & processes
● Tags in the bug tracker
● Screenshots!
● User centered design process

13. Developers getting
better at design
● Learnability, Efciency &
performance, Memorability, Safety,
Satisfaction

14. Show the work
● Show the process
● Have regular meetings
● Document standards, patterns
● drupal.org/ui-standards

15. Attract designers
● You don't need many!
● Clear point of entry on your site
● Start within your user base
● An open source design article on
Smashingmagazine.com might
work though!