Remotely Open: Design Without Borders (May 10, 2017 @ DXD Talks)

Remotely Open
Design Without Borders
Pedro Moreira da Silva
UX Designer at GitLab
@PedroMScom
DXD Talks • May 10, 2017 @ Lisbon, Portugal • Open source presentation

You’re good at what you do,
but things are just “ok”
!
DXD Talks • May 10, 2017 @ Lisbon, Portugal • Open source presentation 2

You’re good at what you do, but things are just “ok” !
— You think clients and colleagues trust you
— You think users are happy
— You’re happy conformed with how much you make
— You hope that your resume/portfolio is good enough
to get you a better job or clients

It’s not your fault
— Generally speaking:
— People have trouble trusting “creatives”
— Users aren’t included in projects
— Design is undervalued (read: underpaid)

Part of the problem is:
Designers aren’t good at
communicating their work

Designing behind closed doors
is holding you and the design
industry back

You can be better,
things can be better
!

Designing in the open
increases the quality and trust
in your work, while opening you
to new clients or jobs.

What’s designing in the open?
!

means sharing the work of an
ongoing design project as
publicly as possible

“Share my work publicly?!
Are you mad?!”

Shareables
What can I share?
!

Shareables !
— Tasks
— Source ﬁles
— Artifacts/deliverables
— Alphas
— Previews/teasers
— Stories/case studies
— Research and ﬁndings
— Tools

Publicness
Who can I share with?
!

Publicness !
1. World (Open source, government, public institutions)
2. User community (Closed source)
3. Clients
4. Company (99.9% of projects)
5. Department
6. Project team
7. You

It will require change.
And change is hard.
!

What’s GitLab?
GitLab is an open source tool used by developers to
work collaboratively from idea to production.
It uniﬁes code repository management, project
management, code review, CI/CD, and monitoring into a
single UI.

GitLab is used by more than 100,000 organizations

1500+ contributors
168 GitLabbers in 38 countries
Remote only organization

Shareables
What are we sharing
with the world?
!

Open tasks
View open UX issues

Open source ﬁles
Feature UIs, icons, illustrations, design elements
GitLab Design Project

Open artifacts/deliverables
Sketches, works in progress, diagrams

Open alphas
Not yet, but working on it
See issue #27845

Open previews/teasers
Dribbble shots and tweets
Inviting participation at GitLab

Open stories/case studies
Blog posts, webcasts,
and talks (like this one!)

Open research and ﬁndings
Hypotheses, videos, ﬁndings, recommendations
GitLab UX Research Project

Open tools
Auto-live Sketch specs and Framer prototypes
Repository Superpowers !

Designing in the open increased
the value and trust in my work.
Also, I ended up learning a lot
about myself.

Why it matters
Our industry needs more
credibility

“But people will steal
my ideas!”
Don’t be paranoid about your “competitive advantage.”
There are many more ideas than the doers that make
them come to life. Be the one that does them.

“Ideas are a dime a dozen.
People who implement them
are priceless.”
— Mary Kay Ash

“But I feel so uncomfortable
sharing my work…”
It’s normal. It’s just human to fear failure. I feel it too.
This uncomfortable feeling maps to our maturity as
designers.

Designer maturity-o-meter 1
1. “Let me work and I’ll get back to you”
— We design and experiment with our process in secret.
2. “Check out these wireframes”
— We share speciﬁc steps and know that feedback will
steer us to a better solution.
3. “Let’s design it together, right now”
— We able to share our rationale with other people while
formulating ideas and iterating.
1
Ryan Singer, 2011; Mark Ukraine, 2017

“But not everyone knows
how to give feedback!”
You’ll get good feedback and bad feedback. Not every
comment is helpful or suggestion is acceptable.
Discuss when you should accept feedback. Sometimes
you need to teach people how to give helpful feedback.

“But haven’t you heard
about ‘design by committee’?!”
— Ok, you got me.
— But the truth is: that can happen to any project.
— It’s in your hands to control this.

“But doesn’t it
take more time?!”
— Short answer: Yes. Everything takes a little more time.
— Long answer: Yes. But you need to look at the big
picture. !

Big picture (aka beneﬁts) !
— It brings clarity to your work
— Clients, colleagues, and users feel included and valued
— Builds interest, community, and participation
— You get diverse feedback from a wider group of people
— More eyes means mistakes are caught early
— It holds you accountable
— You feel less pressured and more conﬁdent
— Other people learn from what you did right/wrong
— You’re seen as the expert

Beneﬁts !
! Bonus:
Your resume/portfolio makes itself, opening the door to
jobs or clients that ﬁt you/your company

Examples
How others are
designing in the open
!

Greater Pittsburgh
Community Food Bank
by Brad Frost
Blog post
Project hub
Open source project hub

by UK Gov. Digital Service
Wrap up blog post
Alpha website
Get Satisfaction community
GOV.UK

Backstage
Project diary
Written/photo/video communication
Documentation
Project management

by DRI
Website with interactive and
responsive wireframes
Using Pattern Lab

Open source projects

Just do it™
!

Just do it™ !
— Create a Dribbble account and post what you’re doing
— Promote Open Design in your company/team, explain
the beneﬁts
— Make room for your team to share the work
— Share your processes, tools, ﬁndings
— Tomorrow morning, think how you can make the
project you’re working on more open

If you can’t do any of this
There’s still a way

Give back to the open
!

Contribute to GitLab’s UX
Work on open UX issues

Work on Mozilla’s design
Mozilla Open Design project

Embrace designing the open
It’s amazing and unforgettable

Thank you 2
@pedromscom
pedroms.com
2
! to Brad Frost, Mark Ukraine, Open Design Foundation, Ryan Singer, Sean Martell

Remotely Open: Design Without Borders (May 10, 2017 @ DXD Talks)

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