A few months ago there was a thread about a new operating system some people wanted to develop that would rely heavily on aesthetics. The mockups/prototypes I saw for it were weak and mostly stolen concepts from OS X. When I asked - as a designer - how I would get involved in these projects before they begin (because designing after-the-fact is no fun for anyone), I was told simply to try to get in touch with someone on the existing project. Unfortunately, tearing up what they'd already done so far didn't really sound appealing to me as I did not want to ruffle any feathers with whoever was currently designing or developing it.
I'm a lot more interested in raising my hand before work is already underway to say "Hey, I'm here. Here's what I've done in the past and here's what I'm interested in doing in the future." To this point, I wish Github had a section for designers who truly want to contribute to open-source so people could get in touch with them right on the site they would be hosting those projects on. I guess I could put something in my Dribbble profile about that, but I don't think that's where devs wanting free work are looking.
I think 'not ruffling feathers' is sure to be one of the biggest challenges; we also have to figure out how to manage team size (if >1) and work load. In 'the real world' we have things like budgets to constrain them and I wonder how that translates to projects where, theoretically, anyone can get involved. It would be a step backwards if we ended up lots of mediocre design-by-committee.
That said, lots of the most impressive products in recent software engineering have been accomplished by remote, disparate groups of strangers. I think that's really cool and something we as designers should get over our egos and strive to be a part of :)
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Great post, Jon.
A few months ago there was a thread about a new operating system some people wanted to develop that would rely heavily on aesthetics. The mockups/prototypes I saw for it were weak and mostly stolen concepts from OS X. When I asked - as a designer - how I would get involved in these projects before they begin (because designing after-the-fact is no fun for anyone), I was told simply to try to get in touch with someone on the existing project. Unfortunately, tearing up what they'd already done so far didn't really sound appealing to me as I did not want to ruffle any feathers with whoever was currently designing or developing it.
I'm a lot more interested in raising my hand before work is already underway to say "Hey, I'm here. Here's what I've done in the past and here's what I'm interested in doing in the future." To this point, I wish Github had a section for designers who truly want to contribute to open-source so people could get in touch with them right on the site they would be hosting those projects on. I guess I could put something in my Dribbble profile about that, but I don't think that's where devs wanting free work are looking.
Thanks :)
I think 'not ruffling feathers' is sure to be one of the biggest challenges; we also have to figure out how to manage team size (if >1) and work load. In 'the real world' we have things like budgets to constrain them and I wonder how that translates to projects where, theoretically, anyone can get involved. It would be a step backwards if we ended up lots of mediocre design-by-committee.
That said, lots of the most impressive products in recent software engineering have been accomplished by remote, disparate groups of strangers. I think that's really cool and something we as designers should get over our egos and strive to be a part of :)