Session Description

In this talk, Marta will discuss the common problems arising in developer and designer communication. FOSS environment, often focused and led by developers, can be an unfriendly environment to designers – but also, sometimes design approaches taken from corporate design environments can be detrimental to FOSS projects and FOSS developers can develop an overcautious approach to UX/UI improvements proposed by perceived outsiders. The very language of commercial design can be off-putting to many developers, and what can convince an investor might completely fail to budge an engineer.

This talk will focus on overcoming those gaps and discussing the ways in which designers can better communicate with developers. Marta will discuss her own experiences in convincing engineers and developers to care about design, share rhetorical approaches and arguments, and talk about mistakes designers make when pitching their work to non-designers. She will also discuss the cultural factors in FOSS spaces that make it harder for designers to be heard, and share her own strategies to deal with such situations.