When project contributors say “design,” what exactly do they mean? Depending on when a design practicioner came-of-age as a designer, what they may have studied in a structured fashion, and where the bulk of their project experience is focused (industry, non-profit, academia), the word “design” can mean many different things. OSS contributors also come from all over the world, and in different regions and project contexts langauge can mean many things. User Experience or “UX” seems to be the term most frequently thrown around these days.

UX was concepted in the US by Don Norman in the early 1990s, and is inclusive of Interaction Design, Content Design, Visual Design, and User Research. Quoting Norman, “I wanted to cover all aspects of the person’s experience with the system including industrial design graphics, the interface, the physical interaction and the manual.” The roots of UX lie in traditional product design, conceptual design, as well as in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) design. HCI is an academic approach to mostly interaction design, that has its roots in the early days of computing before color monitors or mice. Cognitive science and computer science, are the two disciplines that most directly lead into HCI; with industrial design and graphic design, the two disciplines that most directly lead into UX.

• Interaction Design categorically speaks to how tasks are broken-up across a multitude of screens, states, and actions. An experience can have terrific interaction design, yet still lack a consistent visual grid, clear hierarchies, or actionable items “visible” to vision impaired users.
• Visual Design speaks to aesthetic attributes that contribute to shaping digital experiences and their usability (and yes, is typically limited to visual or time-based aesthetics). Branding is a wholly separate design dicipline, however usually falls on the shoulders of a visual designer, when project resources are limited.
• Content Design speaks to the voice and tone of written language, illustrations, photos, and infographics.
• Accessibility Design is considering how interfaces are experienced by folks with hearing, visual, motor skills, or other impairments. Folks who may or may not use assistive devices such as screen readers or bone conducting headsets, or who may just fully navigate UIs with a keyboard.
• Participatory Design or “Co-Design” is an approach to shaping experiences in collaboration with end-users. Practicioners of participatory design function much more as “moderators” of collaborative sessions, than as “creators” of artifacts.
• User Research is the discipline of learning from users. This could be done in a multitude of ways. User interviews are very common, as are moderated and un-moderated user testing sessions—where a version of a UI is shared with many users in a structured fashion.

Contributors in open communities may come from academia, non-profit, or industry (any for-profit, consulting, startup, or corporate environment) project backgrounds. Important in centering the meaning of “design” in the context of a project or individual, is asking to learn about where a design practicioner’s experience or background lies!

In the day-to-day of working on projects, however, more important is understanding that the goal of open project communities is collaboration and learning. As such (and even within gated communities that discourage discipline-fluidity), anyone can be a designer! Experienced design practitioners are not keepers of some guarded skill or mystical talent. Design is a craft, no different from engineering; it takes years of practicing a craft to do it well and in an informed fashion. Yet everybody is also a designer, in practice. Small decisions in our everyday work vs focused practice.

Learning happens through critique, through dialog, and through open sharing. Nobody is an “expert;” only “skilled practitioners” and “enthusiasts,” whom all come together in projects as makers. Respect & reciprocity in balance, with service to our end users as a shared goal. At the end of the day all of our work is stronger and everybody has more fun, when we come together like this.