I would like to help an open-source project with UI design and UX design. I have over 18 years of experience in the field and have worked with desktop and mobile software on Windows, Mac, iOS, Android

I would like to help an open-source project with UI design and UX design. I have over 18 years of experience in the field and have worked with desktop and mobile software on Windows, Mac, iOS, Android and Windows Mobile/Windows Phone. Unfortunately my knowledge of Linux is very limited but I'm eager to learn. Could you help me find a project? @thelinuxEXP @linux @macrumors @windowscentral @windows

80 comments

Have a look at KDE , it is a super welcoming community.
- This. KDE community seems to be very friendly and Plasma could really need a little polishing. Especially the default Breeze theme.
- @coolmojo thanks, I'll check it out!

I think that one of the projects that needs it the most right now, a complete overhaul, is FreeCAD.
It needs a good, competent UX designer. Nothing has changed UX wise for like 6 years. Everyone who begins to use it quits saying that it is the biggest hurdle.
It is literally the only real classical FOSS CAD software and they have no UX designer as far as I know.
- @JustEnoughDucks thanks for pointing that project out, my husband is a heavy CAD user so he could help test it too. I'll look into it, see how I could help.
- You have my vote for freecad
- Everyone who begins to use it quits saying that it is the biggest hurdle.
  It's really not. The main problem with FreeCAD is the topological naming problem (available in a fork) and the lack of assembly support in the core (available as add on). Those make it a pain to build anything more complex and they make refactoring a nightmare. Following that you also have the problem that the geometry code is not very capable and the software will just refuse to perform some actions that would results in multiple bodies.
  That's not to say that the GUI isn't in need of polish. Back in 0.19 it had obvious issues like conflicting keyboard shortcuts between modes and without a tutorial you might have a very hard time finding the window that even allows you to build stuff. So there is plenty of room for improvement, but one shouldn't be under the illusion that there is some professional CAD solution hiding under a bad UI. It's would still be a very basic CAD tool even with a highly polished UI.
  But as they say, every journey starts with a first step. It's certainly a project that has plenty of UI issues and could benefit from improvements.
- Subjective take: there's worse than FreeCAD - sure it's a bit "old school" but it's bearable. O. The other hand, the solver has crashed on me so many times... The workbench way of doing things requires some time to get usdmed to, sure, but a crashing solver is far worse.
  
  Oh I get that. I have been making a flight stick with a bunch of curves. There is a ton of problems with solving and the utilities still, especially TNP, midpoint creation, subtractive pipe solving, and QoL things.
  However, there are already devs working on it and now a private company devoting resources to it recently. What they still don't have is a UX designer, purely from a resource standpoint.
  The solver can definitely be done in parallel. A UX designer can not necessarily just as easily just as well work on multithreaded FEM solver debugging, curved surface resolution, etc... it is a different resource.
- I don't think that FreeCad will have it UX/UI design resolved for good as the software relies heavily on workbenches developed by third parties.

There's a nice little project called Lemmy, have you heard about it?
- @garyhostlaptop I am reading up on it right now! Are you part of it?
  
  You posted to it lmao, by @ ing linux@lemmy.ml. Fediverse!
  
  You actually posted to a Lemmy instance from your Mastodon one fwiw.

I'm also a UI/UX designer who'd love to help out! 🥸
- These are really Linux, but these Android projects need some UX assistance if you're at all familiar with Material Design.
  https://github.com/dessalines/thumb-key
  https://github.com/dessalines/jerboa
  https://github.com/jackBonadies/SeekerAndroid
  https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe
  
  I’m pretty familiar with Material. Wondering how (specifically) I can help. I’ve used and followed some open source projects but I’ve never contributed.
  
  ah perfect, and yes material design was the foundation of my education as a designer! thanks for sharing
  
  This is a great project as well that could use some guidance on UI https://github.com/nightscout/AndroidAPS
- Same. We should form a collective lol. (I have some dev experience also)
  
  Not sure if it helps but https://lemmy.tf/comment/1086993
- https://github.com/DamRsn/NeuralNote
  https://github.com/sdatkinson/NeuralAmpModelerPlugin
  https://github.com/thetwom/toc2
  https://github.com/The-Powder-Toy/The-Powder-Toy
  https://github.com/f-droid/fdroidclient
  first and third desperately need help
- https://stallman.org/
  https://www.gnu.org/
  https://www.fsf.org/

The biggest problem you will run into isn't your skills but the willingness of the people who run various projects to even entertain or accept your ideas or input at all, regardless of your credentials or anything else. You could have the best, most logical UI design for an app and they often won't even entertain the thought of it what-so-ever. This goes double if you lack the ability to actually code it yourself using whatever frameworks and things the project itself uses.
I've worked extensively with various open source projects over the last 30 or so years and that's always the biggest barrier of them all.
- I think hard data can help with convincing, doing various UX studies and A/B tests.

@fernandolins @thelinuxEXP @linux @macrumors @windowscentral @windows please lend a hand to https://yarn.social. This is their flagship instance: https://twtxt.net/. Their main developer is legally blind, and truly could use help with UI/UX.
- huh whats this

Owncast, the foss twitch alternative, is an incredible project and they've been looking for design help for quite some time... https://owncast.online/
- @lps That's very cool, I didn't know about that one. Thank you for the suggestion.
- This is a cool project!
- This is a very cool project! Appreciate you bringing this to my attention.

https://github.com/DamRsn/NeuralNote
https://github.com/sdatkinson/NeuralAmpModelerPlugin
https://github.com/thetwom/toc2
https://github.com/The-Powder-Toy/The-Powder-Toy
https://github.com/f-droid/fdroidclient
first and third desperately need help
- Third one there is actively looking for UI help https://github.com/thetwom/toc2/discussions/74
- @jackpot Thank you very much for the list, I'll investigate them
  
  https://stallman.org/
  https://www.gnu.org/
  https://www.fsf.org/
- first one here literally just came out, second one seems okay and is very popular, third desperately needs it, fourth is ancient

Come help BOINC. BOINC is a software used by scientific researchers to distribute large computational workloads to the computers of volunteers. It is used by projects researching cancer drugs and mapping the galaxy just to name a few things. It works well and has been around over a decade, but is rough around the edges. Your work could have a HUGE impact. The main client and server are in C++, there is also an Android client written in whatever Android apps are written in. There are even some bug bounties which you could get paid for if you fix.
If you have any questions, drop by the discord. Thanks!
- @makeasnek That sounds really interesting, I'll read up on it. I don't know any C, C++ or Java/Flutter/Android stuff, all I can help with is providing mockups, high fidelity specs and prototypes for the screens. I am working on learning how to use more dev tools.
  
  Gotcha. I don't think they have the dev time right now to implement what might come from mockups, even through a new UX has been on the list of needs for a while now. As much as it would be cool to have a new UX vision to rally around, I just don't think much could be done with it. I would want your time you're volunteering to go somewhere useful of course :).
  If you are interested in learning C++ though, there's a number of low hanging fruit issues that might be good things to tackle once you get past the hello world stage.

You could help us at Organic Maps. We are in need of UI designers. Contact me or biodranik on Matrix if you are interested: @g_mate8:matrix.org and @biodranik:matrix.org
- Organic Maps is so nice, thank you for all your hard work 🥰.

Take a loot at https://opensourcedesign.net It's made for people like you
- @morrowind Thanks!
- im confused, whats the website about
  
  It's a project to improve the design of open source apps. So it provides resources, connects designers (like OP) with engineers/projects, spreads awareness etc.

The programming language Go has only few UI building options. One of the few that does not rely on a browser running underneath is fyne. I like its programming model a lot, but as you likely see in the example screenshots: something is off. I can't put my finger on it. I assume it's a mix of different subtle visual cues, spacing, etc.
So if you are willing to work on a UI framework (with bonus points if you are interested in doing a bit of Go programming), I think contributions to fyne would be very cool (so far the maintainer(s) were open to suggestions and input, so I also assume designer input is welcome :-)).
- @aksdb thanks for the suggestions! I'll investigate them

Improve the home page of Lemmy... I think the buttons on top take too much screen space

There are already a lot of great suggestions posted already. I thought I would toss in https://mauikit.org/ which is working in making a convergent UI for desktop and apps.
- @Sarcasmo220 I'm a little worried if I should take your advice since your username is Sarcasmo ;) Thanks I'll look into it
- how does that work
  
  I'm not sure what you mean. The project is developing a framework to help make the UI convergent.

https://github.com/Rosentti/opensteamclient

https://stallman.org/
https://www.gnu.org/
https://www.fsf.org/

Would be nice if this app got a modern UI fork or clone.

Librera Reader. It's a very functional ebook reader with lots of features, but the UI/UX seems like it got stuck in the early 2010s of Android interfaces.

If you are looking for something impactful , libretexts (A platform for open source text books) , and alovoa (website for dating and meeting friends) seems good
- @wikime thanks for the suggestions, I'll read up on them!
  
  Both are some random niche projects, calling them impactful is a bit of a stretch

Do you have much experience with deployment? I've got a small hobby project with a GUI written in Qt, and I've been having a hard time writing reproducible build scripts for cross-platform deployment.
On macOS, I can distribute the executable with homebrew and add Qt as a dependency. On Linux, I could theoretically build an AppImage, but I would prefer to have the build process handled by GitHub Actions, which doesn't have sufficient resources to statically build Qt. On Windows, I'm at a total loss...
My project is tiny, but it does have a niche market, and I'd love to make it available to as many people as possible. Qt is killing me!!!!
Sorry, I know that doesn't have anything to do with the design side of things. I'm just throwing darts, cause I've had a hard time on my own with this.
- @vhstape Hey VHS, unfortunately I don't have any experience with the technical side of development and deployment of software, I only know how it works at a high level. Unfortunately I have seen a lot of projects suffering with QT in the last few years so I hope you can move your project to another UI framework or find a solution to your problem.
  
  Thanks for the reply. What framework would you recommend for C/C++, preferably cross-platform?

The Retroarch blue GUI is terrible.

80 comments