The Secret Lives of OSS Designers: Understanding Designers Contributing To OSS
summary
A 10–16 week diary study with five designers across USA Canada Nigeria Brazil and Germany shows designers struggle with developer platforms like GitHub and GitLab, prefer collaborative docs and Figma over repos, and receive slow or irrelevant feedback that blocks progress; projects rarely include designers in decision making and designers want clear priorities, documented handoffs, and compensation. Recommendations include clearer priority signals and accessible contribution paths. 10–16 week diary study paid $1,000 stipends
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chapters (10)
- 0:00Designers in open source
- 3:12About speaker and Super Bloom
- 10:17Diary study method
- 18:34Designer-dev collaboration
- 25:55Openness in design contributions
- 28:47Measuring success via feedback
- 33:25Project priorities and decisions
- 37:36Why designers leave OSS
- 39:42Recommendations for open source projects
- 40:25Future research and closing
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