Ask Slashdot: Should Open-Source Developer Teams Hire Professional UI/UX Designers?

OpenSourceAllTheWay writes: There are many fantastic open-source tools out there for everything from scanning documents to making interactive music to creating 3D assets for games. Many of these tools have an Achilles heel though -- while the code quality is great and the tool is fully functional, the user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) are typically significantly inferior to what you get in competing commercial tools. In an nutshell, with open source, the code is great, the tool is free, there is no DRM/activation/telemetry bullshit involved in using the tool, but you very often get a weak UI/UX with the tool that -- unfortunately -- ultimately makes the tool far less of a joy to use daily than should be the case. A prime example would be the FOSS 3D tool Blender, which is great technically, but ultimately flops on its face because of a poorly designed UI that is a decade behind commercial 3D software. So here is the question: should open-source developer teams for larger FOSS projects include a professional UI/UX designer who does the UI for the project? There are many FOSS tools that would greatly benefit from a UI re-designed by a professional UI/UX designer.

Comments

Oh hell no

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll make it even simpler (and actually correct):

No.

Send all UX designers back to the interior design firms they escaped from, so they can put curtain-pulls for the mentally deficient in the apartments of the twitch y flamous.

Make software functional, not "pretty." That's what software does. Functions. Effort spent on pretty is not only usually wasted effort, it also often interferes with the software's efficiency in interacting with the user.

Re:WAT?

[hairyfeet]

Because if you want FOSS software to actually be supported and adopted it has to not suck donkey nuts to use?

You want a perfect example Linux as a desktop OS for most of its existence. For most of its life its been pretty damned solid at its core, hell many times its been arguably better than the big two commercial offerings (OMFG Vista how I STILL hate you you festering pile of shit) but once you tried to do anything of note with it that wasn't server related or simply using a browser? Say hello to CLI voodoo incantations, trying to figure out how to edit some seriously fucked up text mess to try to get something to work on your hardware (because the man page is written for part foo and you have foo rev 1 so of course its fiddly ass isn't gonna work) and pretty soon it was about as fun as trying to use DOS as your OS. The tools EXIST sure but good fucking luck if you aren't a CS grad getting it to do what you want!

As the world turns more and more to black box "it just works but you don't own it" computing now more than ever you need to offer COMPELLING reasons to keep FOSS alive outside the server room, because in this day and age people just aren't gonna jump through your hoops when they can just go across the street to Windows 10 Spyware Edition or Mac OSX Yosemite Sam and have everything damn near "push button get bacon" levels of simple.

And I got news for ya, with more and more pieces of tech becoming black boxes? If you don't find some decent UI techs so you can give the big 2 a run for their money? You are gonna end up with nothing but server boxes and Rpi boards to run on as everything else is gonna be DRMed up the ass....and the public will have absolutely no fucks to give cuz "it just works". And the sad part? You've already made great strides in places but nobody promotes them because of elitist doucheyness!

For example why in the holy fuck isn't the community singing the praises of Zorin OS? OTTB it installs even the non free drivers if no free drivers are available with ZERO work required of the user, it looks and acts like Windows 7 which if you ask Windows users they all loved 7 and tend to HATE Windows 10 so that right there is a hell of a selling point, and it even has Play On Linux baked in so all the most popular games that Joe Average might want? They are "clicky c;icky" simple to get up and running!

THIS is the kind of shit you need to be striving for and promoting, the shit that makes it simple to get the masses off the DRM bandwagon, but when I dare to bring this kinda stuff up? I get mountains of hate from douchenozzles who think "CLI is leet" and that if the "plebs" don't learn their ways they can fuck off...got news for ya sparky if those "plebs" decide to all buy Windows 11 "OS tied to EFI" Edition? You be fucked, your precious FOSS will go the way of BeOS everywhere but the server space and hell even that is being killed by SaaS so if you don't start generating some REAL numbers, and I ain't talking "Ohh Google may have Android by the balls and has complete corporate control but it counts cuz kernel" but actual adopters of truly FOSS software and OSes? Your days are rapidly coming to a close because mark my words if you thought the 80s were bad with proprietary everything you ain't seen nothing yet!