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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.
Like really, how exactly is this a legit question?
I would assume that such a position is only contractual anyways, so what's the problem?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Developers who write code for free should absolutely hire millennial art school graduates for real money
I'm making this one simple for you. Yes, if you've got the money, hire them. Make sure they agree to the plan to open source their part of the work too, and ahead of time, or at least give you full rights to it so you can if you choose to.
If an OSS project can attract non-paid developers, why can't it attract UI/UX designers?
Or is maybe the problem that OSS developers often just don't recognize that they're no good at UI/UX design?
There a lot of commercial software products where the UI/UX is truely hideous and as the commercial product tries to cram more unnecessary features to encourage more people buy the latest version or signup for a software lease, the UI/UX get steadily worse.
Maybe the question should be: why aren't UI/UX designers donating time like developers are?
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
The answer is "yes". Open-Source developer teams should hire professional UI/UX designers.
Next question, please.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
should have people who are interested in the project wanting to code for free.
They can use their own free time to code for a project they enjoy working on.
That will produce a great quality of code and ensure the project has years of support as OS and hardware advance.
The code can then be given away to the world for free.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
non STEM liberal arts students, to craft their Common Code, They will also be more than happy to help you understand why people prefer rounded corners more than actual functionality.
Besides, non STEM hires/contractors will work for minimum wage, not including tips. /s
Betteridge
Why don't competent UI/UX designers feel compelled to contribute to open-source projects?
Is it because UI/UX designers are universally a bunch of assholes? (unlikely)
Is it because UI/UX naturally evolves as a secondary concern to software development? (possibly)
Is it because the types that initiate/maintain open-source projects generally consider UI/UX to be of lesser importance? (now we're getting somewhere)
Thats probably why (as a general rule) server side open-source projects are more successful.
The Debian logo is non-free because they used a non-free font.
Did that just blow your mind?
TL;DR: Muscle Memory.
Yes. Then FIRE THEM. And even better, that solves the GUI problem that every-version-has-a-change-somehow. How? Because the "helper" still wants to help so they rearrange the GUI to look/be "better" for next time. And then they do it again. And AGAIN.
You change it when you NEED to change it, not because it's Tuesday and this field suddenly needs to be over there.
It's one thing if you get it wrong and everyone (EVERYONE) complains, it's another if it's a major upgrade with new fields and options. It just sucks though when someone does a GUI.randomize() just because they can.
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
I think it would be better if they would ask for volunteers.
I would like a UI fix for Metapad text editor.
In return, I could help write the documentation.
I need a text editor that is very quick to load. Metapad is wonderful that way. But when doing search and replace, it brings up a new window that requires a mouse click. It should just show the number of replacements.
But this is literally never gonna happen unless you can get a few to see it's worth it first.
I dunno about paid, but I recall the gimpshop guy was working for free yet wasn't exactly celebrated. Even though it was a very good idea.
How is this a question ?
I "know* that I suck at UI/UX. I've been programming for 20 years, and actively studying programming the whole time, so I can generally add a feature or option I want very quickly - sometimes in a matter of minutes. The UI for the new option will be another checkbox or whatever. I'm not improving the UI overall, and hopefully not making it significantly worse.
So I spent 30 minutes and got the feature, fix, or option that I need. I suck at UI, but I don't suck badly enough that I then hire a *competent* professional to make the one part of the UX better for me. It does what I need it to do, the value prop isn't there for me to spend $10,000 getting the UI improved.
There is something else going on. My last job was working full time on an open source project. I sent most of my work upstream. Our organization also had some graphics arts and UI types that made it look pretty after I was done. To my knowledge, it never occurred to them to contribute their work back to the project. Contributing to open source just isn't something they think about. Programmers know about open source. In college and early in our careers we're told that contributing to open source can be a resume builder. Are UI folks told that? Is there an awareness of open source?
Unfortunately there are many, many, MANY bad UI/UX designers in the world. Everyone has an opinion of what good UI/UX design is. Very few have the experience or talent to actually do it well.
Yes, a good UI/UX would vastly improve many open source tools. But UI/UX designers don't write code and honestly most of them aren't worth the opinion they carry into a project. So unless the 'developer' already has great UI/UX skills, any attempt 'tack it on' at the direction of a designer is bound to fail in a tool that is even more horrible to use.
UI/UX designers are only held in check by the continual evaluation, criticism, feedback and product testing that only big paying customers can afford. It's expensive. Just look at MicroSoft and how often they still fail at UI/UX design. Or Chrome, or Firefox or countless other large commercial software tools.
The question should rather be: how UX/UI designers are different from software engineers, if the former do not contribute to free software like the later?
You could have just said you don't know what ux designers do.
"Old man yells at systemd"
They are not real engineers of any sort, and actually the source of many of the problems we see in software today. UI designers demand change for changes sake rather than any sort of reasonable cause. You can't consult an efficiency expert and NOT expect them to recommend change just to justify their own existence. Why can't the UI default be a simple clean design and allow customization by the user, or the user base in general. A library of skins and such applied by end users based on their preference, rather than some group that's very existence is mandated by them finding something, anything to change...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I'm amazed at the level of retarded UIs we have seen from UI people getting involved in software development in general. I can write my own shitty UI than you very much.
You could have just said you don't know what ux designers do.
Why would he have to? UX designers themselves don't know what they do.
WRONG!
Using a non-free font is a fucking minefield. Typically, you have to buy the right type of license (print, online, ads, logos only, video, etc.), then for most of those you have to agree to embed tracking bullshit in your distribution or work only with publishers that do, then you have to buy more licenses if you cross a threshold of impressions.
Fact: Nobody tracks it, and those who claim to know it doesn't work right, and no one know how much they're really supposed to pay. Nearly every single website elling legit font licenses is, in fact, just a different front (often just a domain name and a skin) that ties back into a single actual font whore house that draws up the draconian license agreements no one has ever read and just sues you if they THINK you might not have put in your pound of flesh.
The Debian logo is non-free because they used a non-free font.
Did that just blow your mind?
The debian logo is released under the LGPL v3 or CC BY-SA 3.0, the restricted use logo adds the bottle https://www.debian.org/logos/i...
(But you are correct that a commercial font was used in the creation).
Yeah, I don't see anything wrong with Blender that isn't "not what I'm used to".
It's not that most software writers can't write something that is friendly, its that they don't want to because they don't think it is necessary.
If it works and gets the job done, then so what if it is complicated -- that will weed out the dummies and an I won't waste as much time responding to lame questions.
I've seen some open SW groups that are proud of how difficult their project is to use. And they don't want to change anything, -- heaven forbid, because it might break compatibility with 20 year old server installations.
I've seen more than one geek who didn't like the idea of making it easier to use for others -- there should be a learning curve that keeps out the dummies. Look what happened when they'd let anyone write code (especially web/net code) in the decade leading up to the 1st great computer-based tech crash in the 1990's.
Now this lethargy is spreading to corporation as they rearrange their
business model to get paid for doing alot less (or nothing). Adobe is "rolling in the bucks" now that they don't have to actually come up with new or better products/features in order to get customers to buy the next version. Now they just have to pay to keep access to their old programs.
It really isn't that hard. We need to emphasize the usability part of design, not the 'appearance' part. User interface and user experience have little to do with 'artistic' and much more to do with human factors. We do NOT need a free-software Jony Ives, for pete's sake.
Just some well designed guidelines that people can work from. Coherent, consistent, and intuitive. It's easy to toss those words out, much more challenging to actually accomplish, but it's the kind of thing that only needs to be done once or a few times.
Good advice. Now for a trip down memory lane Google, "KDE, GNOME, Spatial Browser, debate, UI"*. You'll get an eyeful of why FOSS isn't amicable to UX/UI. I doubt little has changed.
*Expand a little to account for, "controls for everything" and "absolutely needed".
BTW UX vs UI: different things.
https://www.ready4s.com/blog/d...
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
It isn't hard for the programmers who write this stuff to eat their own dogfood (use their own software just once) and notice how fucking obtuse, buggy and clunky the UI is. Gnome's System Monitor, which so many Linux desktop distros use as their process monitor, is god-awful, even with so many eyes on it every day. It doesn't take a UX designer to fix it, it just takes a programmer who is familiar enough with the source code.
Another example: Gnome Maps has bugs all over the UI (not bugs at lower layers, because it doesn't crash) but you can left click / right click / menu selection your way into trouble very quickly and easily.
People who write open source software are doing so out of their free time, and I bet they get to a certain point where the functionality is all there, and they get bored with testing and bugfixing the useability aspects.
Writing a good UI is more about really caring than design problems. It takes a lot of time that nobody is paying for and it's not fun. That is why the UX with open source is mediocre. Any programmer can look at a commercial product's UI and try to get parity with what they're writing, but they don't, and that's perfectly understandable.
So in conclusion, I'd say in my professional opinion, that we just need a company with deep pockets to sponsor extant open source programmers to put the finishing touches on their work. It's something they're far better suited to get done than a UX designer.
It has a purpose.
Yes from start its look like bad, if you had enough patience (which you will need a patience) blender has one of the best UI ever (for a 3d modelling software).
This isn't apple sh*t. It primary purpose a fast, capable 3d modelling software. When you getting to use it. You will understand how inferior others interface.
You are comparing shell with windows GUI.
Which better for administering a server ?
[My english is better than most other people's Turkish, so please point out mistakes politely. Thank you.]
Agreed. I have 40years of software experience and only conference where Inever spoke as an invited speaker was a design conference.
The problem wiith arrogant answers like that is not that the nerd looks down on designers. The nerd looks down on his users.
Hint: UX is harder than programming
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
When I taught at a digital design school I was always surprised that the students were not into the open source mindset at all.
There is a large community of open source theme designers, like for Wordpress. But a website and, for example, a UX for smart home interface are two different things.
That said, I've also noticed how a lot of developers have an "I understand HTML so I can design well enough" mentality, which drives designers away. An example is the Domoticz project, an open source smart home home controller. It works great, but the interface is holding it back. Often the developers like designing the interface too much to let it go, even though they're not good at it.
UX designers should contribute to projects they use or find important and companies should contribute assets to lift all the boats? Why is SVG so different from Java in this regard?
This is not how thing should be done in the software world.
If something can be done only for money, not for fun, it means that this is dull, boring job and no one gets fun from it.
Really., UI programming using current UI tools is boring and dissatisfying job. So no good developer would like to do it, and will try to shift burden to the juniors.
But computers are there to automate dull and boring things. What we need it is UI langiage (may be as set of other language functions/operators), which would let us think about UI in appropriate terms. So developers would feel writing of UI as self-expression, not a dull and boring thing.
Donald Knuth once wrote TeX and give millions of scientists all over the world right language to think about printed representation of their work.
What we need is similar set of abstractions for UI.
Blender ist a fulll-blown professional 3D kit. Those are hard to use. They are operating systems by themselves and people good in then usually have years of experience and can't operate any other kit beyond basic functionality.
That being said, blender has some quirks in the details. But on the plus side blender has a huge community, many on the design side of things and quite a few 3D UX industry professionals who maintain laundry lists of blender shortcomings and push for changes in that area. So hiring isn't really necessary for the blender camp. They are working on things and recent major updates have always come with ux overhauls.
On the other side blender has stuff that appears to be quirky but actually is absolute genius when it comes to UI stuff. Window and workplace management in blender is unmatched by any other piece of software I've come across. So what may appear as bad ux may just be extremely innovative.
That aside, yes, FOSS crews shouldn't forget ux. But I don't think there is need to hire someone. There are enough ux experts out there that are perfectly willing to help out a FOSS crew if they are willing to listen.
My 2 eurocents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Many projects are in dire need of a good user interface. However, there are two kinds of UI designers:
1. people from the field of human interface design. Responsible for things like Apple's Human Interface Guidelines book which set the rules for the original Mac OS interface. This group tries to optimize the user experience via solid design principles and user testing.
2. Graphic designers with delusions of grandeur. These have no idea of what constitutes a good interface, and are responsible for idiocy like the flat UI and over-the-top skeuomorphism. Liable to move things around for no good reason, and very susceptible to fads.
These days you're more likely to find #2 than #1.
How would you implement the functionality in edit mode, and somehow prevent it from clashing with object mode, in a modelees was?
To get this right out of the way: I have no problem what-so-ever donating FOSS time for ux. I'm in the lucky position to be both usefully good at programming and UI/UX design, with arts and design diplomas and certs to emphasize that.
The big problem is that good UX is hard. Like 'finding that right asynchronous model' hard or 'finding that obscure USB bug' hard. Plus, people doing UX for free want to do UX well - they have to compromise enough on their day jobs (sounds familiar doesn't it?) - rarely get appreciation for how long it takes and how hard it is. Besides, it's usually functionality that's lacking.
Point in case: are the leaving shortcuts for cropping in Gimp a UX problem or a programming problem? Not sure, you tell me. It's only now starting to bug me so much in going to file a feature request this week.
There are enough perfectly good UX people out there. Just don't think that someone who takes pride in his UX work can deliver on the drop of a hat. UX has to be a key concern, just like supporting API XYZ or something. With the whole team. Do that and your UX will be just fine. KDE seems to have UX pretty nearly covered, as does elementary os and quite a few other GUI related projects.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
No you don't understand UX designers. You see, these are arts school dropouts. That makes them the perfect person to understand the mentality of a "stupid user" and therefore the absolute authority on how to design user interfaces for software not targetted at engineers or programmers. :-)
Are the OSS tools/programs really that horrible in UI/UX design? Sure, some are, but is, given the example, Blender one of those?
Blender is different and perhaps that is why you think the UI/UX design is bad, somebody who used Blender his whole life and would go on to use one of the more know commercial offerings would think the same because he's used to how Blender works.
For example, I think 'vi' has great UI/UX, there are probably a lot of people who disagree (and think emacs is the pinacle of UX), but my brian is wired to it and it feels good to use.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
And they should stop redesigning it every goddamn iteration.
I tend to rant.
Has anyone actually asked for free consultation with a UX designer? They may just need to know how/when to get involved. In my experience though, developers always know exactly what the user should be doing, so therefore there is no need for a designer ;)
Please, dear God, no! Open source UIs aren't always the best to begin with. Please don't hire those sort of people to make the UIs even worse.
As a developer and doing my own UI/UX I can say I can't really even think about the UI/UX much until I've developed a lot of the final product. Until then, fields and control come and go move from one screen to another, maybe completely change what sort of purpose it has. Developing is not a set in stone thing, and on independent projects like these where you may be pushing the envelope in features where there may not be a UI/UX paradigm for it.
In the design phase for these projects, it is a great benefit if whoever does the UI/UX design know the the environment in and out and if it is a specific subject - should know that pretty well too, you can't just plop down and work up some awesome Blender interface unless you have really used Blender extensively and know what would actually make an awesome interface for someone working with Blender.
Ao as most of these people say, Yes it's an awesome thing, no its not cost effective to pay people on an rarely unpaid open source project, and mostly if you want a great UI/UX you really need to be a lasting member of a project where you can develop the user aspects along with side the evolving technical aspects.
And if you were able to make some awesome easy-to-use advanced interface for blender, you will be well recognized.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Blender is terrible.
They were building a multiplatform app, they had hard work to do, getting it to work correctly with the various GUIs. They said 'fuck it' and rolled their own terrible GUI, that doesn't do anything like any other program or even consistently
Open file dialogs are a prime, basic example. Every GUI has pretty standard, well working, browse for file(s)/folder functions, Blender built their own SHITTY ones.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Bullshit. Anybody who's touched Blenders UI should never be allowed near code.
Blender sucks balls. Sure, when doing new things, sometimes you need new UI elements. That's not what the Blender team did, they blew off all UI standards and rolled their own 'everything'. Like a DOS 'gui'. The point of user interface standards is so you don't have to _fight_ the 'file open' dialogs.
Consistent? No, that's half the problem. I suppose it's consistently _shitty_ on Windows, Mac and X.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Should I buy a boat?
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
I've heard this same bullshit for 30 years now and it all boils down to one simple statement: "I can't easily automate it." You're lazy. You want the pay involved in doing tedium but don't actually want to do anything tedious. How else would you have time to post on stackexchange, slashdot, and 4chan?
Seriously, you picked that to fixate on? Get a fix for the autism.
There was nothing else there worth fixating on. It was just trolling from start to finish.
somebody who used Blender his whole life and would go on to use one of the more know commercial offerings would think the same because he's used to how Blender works.
Likewise, a GIMP user like me would have some relearning to do if dropped in front of a copy of Adobe Photoshop.
But I think what other people are trying to say is that applications for macOS ought to work like the applications included with macOS and other applications published by the publisher of macOS. Likewise, applications for Windows ought to work like the applications included with Windows and other applications published by the publisher of Windows. Things like Blender work like neither.
Could you post some links or descriptions of how other programs do this? 3dMax for one seems to work exactly like Blender in this regard (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0iUYrKx8z8).
I suppose you could remove the need for edit mode if you removed the strict object-mesh relation. Every mesh would simply be a connected set of vertices, and you could fluidly join or split meshes. You could isolate a single mesh for easier editing. Does any 3d editor do this?
(Also I'm the AC who posted the original comment, I created this account right after).
It's probably been even longer since I've used it, but last I checked SketchUp was geared more towards CAD, whereas Blender, 3dMax, Maya and others are geared towards 3d animation (very high detail, non-real time rendering). While SketchUp does have intuitive additive and subtractive geometry deformation tools, they are higher level than Blender's straight up mesh topology editing. Blender naturally uses quads, hardly any higher level than the natural triangles that are native to real-time (GPU accelerated) rasterized computer graphics.
But this is all tangential to the edit/object mode discussion. SketchUp also has the notion of layers, which seem to be like the layers in GIMP or Photoshop and act like Blender's objects (strictly speaking, more like Blender's meshes that are associated to objects, since Blender also has non-mesh objects). Yeah I guess that reduces the number of operations involved in editing one component to editing another component to just a layer switch, but I don't see how that's an improvement. Though I also don't see how edit mode and object mode are bad design either.