They want people to make things pretty, and there's a big difference.
Bringing a competent designer on board means bringing a strong opinion on board.
Someone who'll probably decide to cut 90% of the features.
The problem with most open source projects is everyone involved has an opinion that they'll fight for, so you end up with 1000 features, designed by a committee of developers (see the Linux desktop)
I'm certainly not going to speak on behalf of every open source project. But the ones I work on? This couldn't be farther from the truth.
If you're a designer and want to contribute to Django PLEASE hop on django-developers or get in touch. I would love to have you.
[I think there's a kernel of truth in iamcalledrob's comment. Designers and developers often speak different languages, and I think this can often make designers feel unwelcome. I've neither the space nor the time to expand on this thought, however.]
You make it sounds like if Autocad had involved a designer in the process, they would have wound up with google sketch. Sometimes things need to have features, even features that 90% of users won't need 90% of the time. A good designer shouldn't be the person who decides to cut features, he should be the person who figures out how to keep the features, but in a manner that allows new users to start with a minimum of pain, and expert users to keep growing into the product. That's hard work, and it takes a lot of cleverness and creativity, but I think anybody willing to do that work would be welcome in any sane open source project.
EDIT: on re-reading my post, it looks like I'm saying Autocad didn't have designers, which is completely the opposite of how I feel. What I was trying to get it is that (IMO) Autocad is an amazingly approachable product with tons of features, just presented in a way that isn't terribly daunting to a new user.
Except that there are tons of projects that haven't been designed by a committee or that have a reasonable hierarchy based on meritocracy.
Firefox, the Linux kernel, Wordpress, Rails (and here I'm specifically mentioning infrastructure, as APIs need good design too).
The Linux desktop sucks for sure, but that's only because everybody, including designers, are only interested in the first 80% of the implementation which is the interesting stuff. The other 80% of the work is boring and people have to get paid to work on it - that's why projects with commercial interests do get polished (there are exceptions like Eclipse of course, which is over-engineered).
Someone who'll probably decide to cut 90% of the
features
Personally I hate the Gnome desktop because it doesn't have the features I want. The OS X desktop has tons more features and attracts many more users.
It's also not the job of the designer to cut features. His job is to create an interface to make those features easy to use.
Also the article mentions Eclipse versus Coda. Personally I hate Eclipse, but that's what you end up with when creating an IDE for a language with APIs designed for IDEs in the first place.
Of course, it could have a better design, as IntelliJ IDEA can show, but even IDEA is overkill for projects created in dynamic languages designed for simple text editors. See what I did there?
> Firefox, the Linux kernel, Wordpress, Rails (and here I'm specifically mentioning infrastructure, as APIs need good design too).
I can't speak for the Linux kernel, but Firefox isn't a shining example of great design. It was back in its early days, when it was incredibly simple, but now it's place is as the complex browser that's extendable in any way.
At the cost of ease of use.
Chrome is now the browser that has opinions and does it right.
> Personally I hate the Gnome desktop because it doesn't have the features I want. The OS X desktop has tons more features and attracts many more users.
The OS X desktop is fairly feature-light, and definitely opinionated. Notice the lack of support for themes or colour customisations in OS X. The dock is at the bottom, the menu bar is at the top. Because Apple say so. And I trust they know what they're doing.
That being said, Apple's shift in focus to iOS can be felt when you look at Lion.
Last time I made a serious attempt to use Gnome was a year or two back - and it was clear that there was a lack of decision making.
Nobody's got a strong enough vision to just decide what typeface the UI should be in, or how the menus should be structured, or whether running apps should be at the top or the bottom of the screen.
They defer these decisions to the poor users, saying "it's customisable, make it exactly how you want!", when in reality, you end up with an unpredictable and difficult to use product that nobody understands, and can be got into broken states easily.
"Oops, I removed the Applications menu". That kind of broken.
> It's also not the job of the designer to cut features. His job is to create an interface to make those features easy to use.
Not true. This is what I mean by open source doesn't want designers.
A good designer will almost certainly simplify your initial idea, cutting all the fluff that's not essential to the product. This is why you need to involve a designer at the very start of the project.
A designer who doesn't do this is probably not a good designer.
The dock is very customizable. I have never used it at the bottom for years of using a mac.
You are correct that people do not properly cost in the mental load of having a non-clean interface infront of them.
I love the SketchBookPro interface for instance in how it disappears. I also like the new "Giant Bubble" MS products much more than the prior un-ribboned versions.
I am a developer (although iOS, so perhaps have a higher love of design than some devs).
I can only see a designer thriving at one of the Linux distribution companies. Companies given you a structure that will let a designer thrive if it is the distributions focus.
So true. I've offered my services to several OSS projects in the past, and they were extremely pleased when I did... and then they fought over every single trivial tiny thing I laid out in my plan, and ignored me, til all I could say was "fuck it." I figured that if I was going to go through all that pain, I was going to get paid for it.
That sounds like development in general. Freetime workers tend to be an overly contentious lot, demanding lots of justification for non-additive changes. You are "deleting someone's baby" some of the time.
They want people to make things pretty, and there's a big difference.
Bringing a competent designer on board means bringing a strong opinion on board.
Someone who'll probably decide to cut 90% of the features.
The problem with most open source projects is everyone involved has an opinion that they'll fight for, so you end up with 1000 features, designed by a committee of developers (see the Linux desktop)