Why are designers relatively rare contributors to open source?
(I have a few ideas but I'm curious to hear others' 🤓)
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Design requires holistic, auteur-like thinking, which doesn’t fit well into incremental participation models of the open source world.
Similar to really good long-form writing. Which may be why it hasn't been successfully done (AFAIK) in an open source form.
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Design systems are the beginning of the bridge between them
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It’s true, but I feel design systems (as the term is typically used in current trends) are pretty close to the surface in terms of depth-of-design-thinking. I wonder how to build systems which support pushing deeper in OSS.
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Holistic approach/thinking is not incompatible with executing/evolving in smaller steps 🙃
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Yes, that’s true, and great designers do make use of that fact! Requires very “4-D chess” mindset on the part of the designer, though, which does represent a barrier to entry.
I strongly disagree :)
design is the most encompassing & participatory discipline of all.
if you're not taking into consideration all inputs from all actors/participats you're not doing it right.
then it's a problem of perceptions on authorship by those external to the process