Design circle with authority

Let me be honest. As designer I’m a team of one in this small project. I’m alone.

And I don’t think this is necessarily bad, despite valuing a cohesive community and belonging to the entire project. In fact I believe working together is the single most important aspect of a free software project succeeding, even more important than the amount of contributors or their skill levels.

Certainly not being alone would be better, but I think being the one designer is still good – as we need versatile skills to do great things. Here is the catch: being the only designer among many non-designers, and only getting privileges and rights of a coder without being able to use them is not good enough.

Design approaches a project from different angles, gets applied differently, requires different skills. As a designer I can’t just join a process that is streamlined to create code. In order to be able to have a relevant impact on a release a new way of influence would have to be established, something not depending on git. There needs to be a place for decisions and consensus even before code gets created.

This is another way of me saying that design needs to have more power. Commit rights just don’t do the trick here.

I’m not delusional. I do see the intricate problem of asking volunteers to follow design consensus of a team of one - in that case me. I’m just speaking up and saying that in my eyes a design circle with authority is necessary.

This begs the question of what authority I’m talking about. But I can’t answer that. It is up to all non-design project members to decide in how far they are willing to delegate. I’d love to contribute to the project and am interested in hearing how you image this could work in the future.

What decision making power should a design circle have in your eyes?

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Thanks for summarizing your proposal, @mray. The team discussed your forum post on the community call just now. Though folks had sympathy for different aspects of your proposal, ultimately, we all agreed that we don’t want introduce a design role with authority. We chose instead to enhance the project’s current decision-making structure with an RFC procedure. We each had our own reasons for coming to this conclusion, but we all agreed that we don’t want to create a design role with special authority. We felt that your proposal doesn’t fit our community’s needs right now.

We’ve spent two months discussing community governance, and we’re ready to conclude this process and move forward together. I know this isn’t the outcome you wanted, but it’s the outcome that the team chose after multiple lengthy discussions. I’m confident that our project will continue to succeed.

This is so sad. Another free software project still not getting it. So much effort just wasted only to find out that FreedomBox thinks it does not need designers having a say, too. I’m glad I finally made you think about it and come to a conclusion that frees up my time to work on other things.

Good luck in achieving your goals either without designers, or with ones that can manage to have a noteworthy impact on the project in its current form (the RFC won’t change this at all). I could not get through to you, maybe somebody else will. I hope so, because for what its worth: I think you really need it.

Let me say a few points to clarify the community decision on the matter:

  1. We welcome design work. We accept that making server technology easy to use for non-technical users is one of the fundamental goals of the project. For this we need simple, non-technical user interface.
  2. We need better interface. We agree that although we have made good progress on improving our user interface, we have a long way to go before it meets our desired standard. We welcome change.
  3. We value designers. Coders in the project understand that their design skill is limited and experienced designers can perform a better job at achieving our design goals. We value non-coding contributions as is evident from our interactions with our translators, packagers, testers, documentation contributors, hardware partners and our end users.
  4. Design team: We have not closed doors to the idea of a design team having the final say in the design even when other project members don’t agree on certain aspects. However:
    • We believe design should be subject to a rational thought process and community discussion just like every other aspect of the project.
    • Design team needs to earn the trust of the rest of the project team by showing a compassion towards theirs concerns and encouraging open discussion.
    • We currently don’t see any contributors to the project that we could unequivocally elect to such a position.
  1. We welcome design work. …
  2. We need better interface. …
  3. We value designers. …

How reassuring to know that we are on the same page after all. :slight_smile:

  1. Design team: We have not closed doors to the idea of a design team having the final say in the design even when other project members don’t agree on certain aspects.

Wow, you even agree that design should have at least some kind of final say! I’m really curious what kind of power you consider to be appropriate to delegate! :slightly_smiling_face:

However:

  • We believe design should be subject to a rational thought process and community discussion just like every other aspect of the project.

Oh no. here come the hoops one has to jump through:

Rational thought process and community discussion you say?… Outch!
I never ever engaged in any of those really! I think that looks bad on me. :grimacing:

  • Design team needs to earn the trust of the rest of the project team by showing a compassion towards theirs concerns and encouraging open discussion.

Bummer. That is a real definition of trust: "Showing a compassion towards concerns"! :hushed: I certainly ignored the community and avoided open discussion on a regular basis. Just look what I contributed all those years!

  • We currently don’t see any contributors to the project that we could unequivocally elect to such a position.

OH NO! :disappointed_relieved: You happen to agree with so much of what was proposed, but given those three funny hoops one has to jump through, nobody here around is unequivocally eligible, unfortunately.