Hey all. Kinda new-ish to open source (always loved the idea, been using some of them for years, like VLC, audacity, handbrake, Firefox, etc) but started getting more and more into it recently, messing around with linux, running a NAS with various docker apps etc. I’m a designer, and one thing I noticed is how a lot of FOSS have terrible user interfaces. I know they are often made by engineers who focus more on functionality than design, but I also read some comments about doing kind of bad design on purpose. Like keeping things plain, boring, “function over form” kind of design. Is that a thing in the scene? I’m asking because I would like to get involved. I don’t code but I could help with design assets, user interface design etc. I’d love some small projects to build a UI/UX portfolio slowly on spare time. Anyone knows where I should look to get projects I could get involved in?
Not for most projects as far as I have seen. You are right that for a lot of things, UX/UI can be a bit of an after-thought, but for some projects it can get a lot of attention.
I feel as though a lot of projects have recently reached a point where they have time to begin thinking about how things look though, and it’s nice because I think it has made Linux and open source as a whole much more appealing to a wider audience.
It used to be that you would show someone a Linux desktop and they would recoil from it because of how things looked, but now when I show friends screenshots of customized window managers and applications in their current state, so many more people are attracted to it because the aesthetics now crush a lot of what the proprietary stuff has.
Even my parents in their late 60’s when I put them on Mint with Cinnamon felt as though they could more easily find where things were compared to Windows, and felt as though it is the embodiment of what an actual modern OS should be.
All in all, if anyone claims they don’t want a better UX/UI because they are focusing on “function”, it usually just means they don’t understand the meaning of the word. People like you who want to contribute on that end are very welcome.
Yeah, as a designer I’m a mac user on my main work machine. A decade ago I installed some version of linux to revive and old laptop and it was… Ok. But I recently got a steamdeck with steamOS and I really love the look and customization of desktop mode, which made me look into different linux distros, comparing interfaces and it’s true some of them look pretty cool. I think the main thing is to set it up as simple or as complicated as you need, the option to work without all the windows or macos bloat.