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1. Scott Jenson (scottjenson@social.coop)'s status on Friday, 10-Feb-2023 10:51:08 JST Scott Jenson

   #OpenSource and #UXDesign friends.

   My current theory is that most pushback to new #UX ideas for a project is rooted in tech limitations (e.g. the current library can't do that)

   So your improved #UI is rejected not because no one wants it, but that it's "too hard" to do.

   Comments? Stories? Alternative theories?

   • Scott Jenson (scottjenson@social.coop)'s status on Friday, 10-Feb-2023 13:37:42 JST Scott Jenson

     in reply to

     • Supratim

     @heysupratim
     I think we agree. Everytime I try to discuss #UX and #FOSS I get the same strawman pushback or gross misunderstanding of what I'm asking for. It's almost as if they don't understand what #UX is ;-)

     And that is what I'm trying to fix. UX is about team building not opinion wars or 'frivolous changes'.

     Good UX is pragmatic, focused, and works WITH devs to make the product work. UX should make a team MORE efficient, not less.

     But that's not what most people in #FOSS seem to think.

   • Supratim (heysupratim@fosstodon.org)'s status on Friday, 10-Feb-2023 13:37:47 JST Supratim

     in reply to

     @scottjenson Ah apologies for complex prose on my reply.

     I meant that aside from tech debt , its often the engineering/product team's inability to spend that extra bandwidth than necessary towards new #UX ideas that is the cause for pushbacks.

     Adrian Cochrane repeated this.
   • Scott Jenson (scottjenson@social.coop)'s status on Friday, 10-Feb-2023 13:37:48 JST Scott Jenson

     in reply to

     • Supratim

     @heysupratim
     I'm not sure I follow, are you saying I'm asking for perfection?

     I *totally* agree it's critical to work within boundaries, but the implication that UX design is asking for too much is a mischaracterization of what I'm asking for.

     I've worked on repos with horrible, debilitating tech debt and it makes nearly any changes 'too much to ask for".

     I'm just saying that discussing tech debt might be helpful

   • Supratim (heysupratim@fosstodon.org)'s status on Friday, 10-Feb-2023 13:37:49 JST Supratim

     in reply to

     @scottjenson Someone said a very nice thing to me long time ago. The ability to outdo your work and deliver the best is motivated and stimulated by your environment, time and headspace.

     For example,in an organization that has tight deadlines, high focus on meeting targets, the ability to zoom out and hone in on craftsmanship disappears. You lack the zeal to do that and often it becomes an uphill battle towards perfection that no one wants to undergo.

   • Scott Jenson (scottjenson@social.coop)'s status on Friday, 10-Feb-2023 18:00:42 JST Scott Jenson

     in reply to

     • Abandoned
     • Supratim

     @doctormo @heysupratim

     Yes, I'm worried that my biggest enemy here isn't devs but rather jerky UX designers that have ruined it for the rest of us.

     You bring up a critical point: centralized control (which many FOSS projects try to minimize) UX, at its core, is all about perspective, trying to see the real problem but this implies hard choices sometimes need to be made.

     I DONT want to pick a fight over this issue but it does seem to be the core philosophical problem.

   • Abandoned (doctormo@fosstodon.org)'s status on Friday, 10-Feb-2023 18:00:43 JST Abandoned

     in reply to

     • Supratim

     @scottjenson @heysupratim

     MuseScore is interesting because it points to ux being incompatible with non hierarchical project organisation. I really hope this isnt the case, but it appears at least easier to force ux to be centered when you can direct people's work.

     The best ux people are aggregate user avatars, the worst are opinionated bullies. Clear consensus building (sigh, politics) is what I've seen work well.

   • Scott Jenson (scottjenson@social.coop)'s status on Friday, 10-Feb-2023 18:00:44 JST Scott Jenson

     in reply to

     • Abandoned
     • Supratim

     @doctormo @heysupratim

     Completely agree! Thank you for bringing this up. Many UX improvements are not 'free', they take work and that must be accounted for. It's a classic cost/benefit trade off and as you imply, is often underappreciated

     I'm reminded of MuseScore which took an entire YEAR (!!) to rework their tech stack *just* so they could iterate on their UX faster. There were many other benefits of course.

     That's clearly a big ask, but shows how some projects DO make this choice.

   • Abandoned (doctormo@fosstodon.org)'s status on Friday, 10-Feb-2023 18:00:45 JST Abandoned

     in reply to

     • Supratim

     @scottjenson @heysupratim

     When I've worked on ux centric or driven projects for inkscape (see objects dialog) there is a large amount of extra effort needed to push the technology to do things, to flow in new ways. All that effort has to have resources and that support comes from a project that has the ability to invite wider populations to participate constructively.

     The consensus building you mentioned isn't as useful if respect for non-developer contribution is missing.

   • Supratim (heysupratim@fosstodon.org)'s status on Friday, 10-Feb-2023 18:01:10 JST Supratim

     in reply to

     • Abandoned

     @scottjenson @doctormo how do you think we can solve this issue at an actionable level for new open source projects. What are some actionable takeaways for new project owners and maintainers to not let this happen for their project?