FOSS Backstage Design is a single track one day dedicated to elevating Design in FOSS. Part of the week of FOSS Backstage, FOSS Backstage Design takes a deep dive into UX Design in FOSS. March 6th in Berlin, Germany.

FOSS Backstage Design March 6 2024

I had the privilege of attending and speaking the inaugural FOSS Backstage Design Conference. Along with 12 other speakers gathered at Wikimedia Deutschland, it was a day filled with insightful talk and ideas on how to better design for Open Source.

Talks ranged from "Stewarding Usability for Humanitarian Open Source Software" (presented by Katie Wilson & Abhishek Sharma) to "Designing UIs without a UI designer" (presented by Gleb Stroganov)–don't get thrown by that title, it details a framework rooted in design best practices developers can use before their team hires a designer. Each presentation highlighting the need for more designers within the Open Source community and the benefits good design can have in wider adoption of OSS products. Read a bit further and you'll find more about these talks below.

Getting to the Holodeck

Hmm, what does all this have to do with Extended Reality? Well, XR is now a growing sector within the tech industry and quite frankly it needs more open source tools, and contributions to XR OSS projects. The XR space still seems largely a dev party (no offense devs, we love you!) and seeing how the conference had a focus on design, I decided to give an XR 101 overview for designers with low barriers of entry for creating experiences with free or freemium tools!

In Star Trek, the Holodeck provided endless possibilities and today's Extended Reality technologies give a us our first glimpse into that future. XR is for sure going to be key in creating a more equitable and accessible web. Tools like Bezi, ShapesXR, and Spline are making design and prototyping for 3D and XR experiences easier. AltSpace(RIP) revolutionized content creation along with how artists create and share their work. Within education MergeCube, MagicLeap, and Google Cardboard are allowing children to engage in their learning in a more tangible way.

Here's the link to the full version of my talk "Building the Holodeck: XR for Designers". I touch more on why XR will be important for creating and sustaining a more equitable web, what XR is and it's three pillars, frontend along with visual tools along with platforms/game engines. Hopefully you'll be more interested in the XR space and maybe help bring in more open source tools to the space as well.

You can find all presenter videos on the FOSS Backstage YouTube page. While all of the presenters were amazing, here are my 5 favorite talks of the conference.

5. Re-thinking Product Adoption Through Documentation Design - Pedro Fernandes

Sometimes documentation can be a bit of drag to get through, particularly when it's poorly implemented. Pedro talks about using documentation to improve product adoption through mindful implementation. If you've ever been stumped while navigating docs for a new software or framework or want to update your own it's worth the watch.

4. Building an Open Source Community Beyond the Code - Carolina Portugal & Elena Alcalde

In this talk Carolina & Elena focus on the life blood of open source–the community! Drawing on their real-life experience in growing the Penpot Community, they touch on how to foster a welcoming and diverse community, along with strategies for ensuring project growth and success. BTW Penpot is a FOSS tool for UX & product design and you should totally check it out.

3. Devs in Mind: How to Design Interfaces for Developer Tools- Anton Lovchikov

Dev Tools!!! There's definitely a difference in designing for dev tools as opposed to consumer apps. If dealing with non-linear behavior and understanding how to minimize friction while crafting dev tools is your bag, check out Anton's talk which draws on his experience with Evil Martians.

2. Designing UIs Without a UI Designer - Gleb Stroganov

With designers not being as active in contributing to open source as developers, sometimes devs have to become the designers. If that happens to be you, fear not! Gleb outlines steps for incorporating design principles through engineering that can get the ball rolling when developing your UI.

1. Stewarding Usability for Humanitarian OSS Katie Wilson & Abhishek Sharma

Not sure how many of designers think about security during their process, but it turns out to be a big part of usability. In this talk Katie & Abhishek explain the relationship between usability, design, and security and explore implementing usability metrics and testing within these OSS projects.

Well that's it, first techy blog post, and first conference talk in the bag!