Roy Scholten Bootstrapping UX design in your open source project

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At FOSDEM, Roy shared his experiences on the Drupal project and his advice for anyone looking to increase UX design in their own project.

Why bother with UX?

  • It must be usable, if a user can't install it they can't tell if it's useful to them.
  • Once they know, there are probably other products available, so you need to make your product delightful or desirable.

Drupal retrospective

###Drupal 6

  • Drupal was getting popular, there were many complaints that it was hard to use.
  • Initiated two full blown usability tests.
  • The results were disastrous. Even with a help desk to call, no one made it through.
  • PANIC
  • The community realised it had to do something about it.

###Drupal 7

  • Dries blogged, critical UX issues, Drupal 7 is not getting released without it. Put UX in the spotlight.
  • The community UX team was formed.
  • The community struggled to make an impact, improvements were iterative.
  • Two professional designers outside the community were hired by Acquia, to develop a grander vision for Drupal 7.
  • They did design research, usability testing, developed a grander vision for Drupal 7. 80,000 euros for half a year were spent.
  • Drupal 7 was lab tested, the critical usability issues were fixed.

###Drupal 8

  • After the grander problems were fixed, we could focus on more specific efforts. For example the content creation form.
  • Drupal is a large project, everyone has an opinion about design. Every design issue does not get committed under 100 comments.
  • Codifying patterns and best practices, drawing up guidelines on how to implemented UI consistently.
  • Moving towards smaller, more focused releases after Drupal 8.

Bootstrapping usability

Usability tests

  • Avoid opinion based discussions by using data.
  • "7/10 people struggled to complete this task, we have to change something"
  • Recorded usability tests show people the pain of users.
  • Pre-Drupal 6 - the implementors of Drupal were also the users, the technical and user mental models were mixed.
  • It sets a baseline, the next test will show you if you've improved.
  • Students who were involved in the project had access to a lab, the community UX test helped write the test script.

Reviews

  • Ask an interaction designer to review the UI, they can help prioritise problems.
  • Be open to reviews
  • Look at the support requests for common user problems

Build a design culture

  • The project lead has to champion the vision, for example, not releasing Drupal 7 until the UX issues were fixed
  • Develop a design vision for the project, develop principles
  • Set priorities, you have to make trade offs
  • Allow for the design process to happen, adapt the tools and processes to help the designers.

Tools and processes

  • Create a design tag to make the design issues easy to find
  • Post screen shots in issues, so it's easy for designers to review UI changes

Help Developers get better at design

  • Teach developers about learnability, efficiency and performances, memorability, safety, satisfaction.

Show the work

  • Document and publish usability studies and improvements and guidelines.

Attracting designers

  • Don't try and get many designers at once, one designer can make enough work for many developers!
  • Try and make strong relationships with few designers
  • Make a clear point of entry on your site for designers.
  • Start with your own user base