The secret lives of designers in OSS
summary
A diary study follows five designers for 16 weeks (participants paid) tracking tools like GitHub/GitLab and Figma, artifacts produced, and weekly reports. Key findings: feedback matters only when relevant and useful and when it arrives promptly; priorities are often hidden in developer issue queues so designers stall; designers quit when most time goes to communication or product management instead of design. Concrete fixes include a contributing.md that names designers, clearer roadmap signals, and leaving work pick‑up‑able by others.
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chapters (16)
- 0:00Introduction to talk
- 1:07About Super Bloom
- 3:58Meet the speakers
- 4:42Project origins
- 6:48Transparency in design
- 8:11Designer-developer collaboration
- 9:57Defining success in OSS
- 10:19Feedback as success metric
- 15:01Priorities in open source
- 18:10Why designers leave projects
- 19:55Recommendations for projects
- 21:17Attracting designers to projects
- 24:12Payment and participation
- 24:57Measuring success in OSS
- 29:55Teamwork vs independent work
- 32:45Q&A and closing
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