As many of you will know by now the Design Initiative for Drupal 8 is underway. We're going to build a new theme for Drupal 8, however this is not the only goal of the initiative - we have two other goals: provide a collaborative environment for designers and to promote Drupal to the broader design community. In essence we're raising the profile of design and designers in the Drupal community, with a particular focus on Drupal core development.
Since this is my first post in D4D on the Design Initiative I wanted to talk about why I am doing this and what we can all do to help this initiative succeed. I'm not going to focus on details of the initiative, those will come soon enough, for now I will focus on why designs time has come and what we want to do about it.
Taking on a core initiative is a huge commitment, I had to think long and hard about this, I'm looking at maybe 18 to 24 months of work and by and large most of it's going to be thankless tasks. So why am I doing this? It all comes down to passion and the burning desire to see Drupal made beautiful.
Drupal has for so long been stigmatized as the ugly duckling of the CMS world - Garland made huge strides to redress this, and Bartik is well liked by many, however Drupal has failed to capture the hearts and minds of the wider design community. There are many reasons for this, too many to list or discuss here - these things are well known and have been endlessly iterated over for many years. I have a single minded vision - to obliterate the stigma and unveil the Swan.
Many designers are attracted to Drupal, but they find it hard to get involved. Its really hard to know where to start, how to negotiate something like our issue queues, or where they might be best suited to made a valuable contribution. I personally have shepherded several new designers into the Drupal community this year alone, helping them find their bearings and getting them involved in various projects. Without my help it would have been much harder for them. Drupal is a hostile world even for the most thick skinned designer - you need balls of steel and the hide of an elephant to survive - it shouldn't be like this. We need a designer friendlytm environment.
So how are we going to provide this environment - our first priority is to build our own designer friendly site. This site will be a collaborative type site where designers can post work and have it reviewed. In essence its going to be a bit like dribbble.com or conceptfeedback.com (the latter has 10 000 members, so this is not something new or untried, is a well honed vehicle that designers are getting on-board with by the thousand). Ideally we want this site to be a sub-domain of drupal.org so we can have a single single sign on and capture signups also. There are infrastructural issues we need to account for so this is on the wish list (being a sub-domain), if that gets vetoed for whatever reason we'll build it anyway on another domain.
We see this new space working in a similar way to g.d.o does for other issues - for example discussions regarding key issues in Drupal often take place here (g.d.o) before being formalized into issues (actionable items) in the drupal.org issue queues. Similar processes will play out on our site. Simply put the d.o issue queue is a very crappy place to do design development - its hard work and I've seen more issues fail than succeed because the tools and environment are not right. Prairie might change this over time, however we don't have the luxury of months and maybe even years to wait for those changes. We need to move now.
Let me be clear about this - we're not proposing to build something where you can upload themes, download design-centric modules or any such features - this is purely about design and providing a designers workspace.
Initially I would like to see the new site exist on design.drupal.org (for single sign on with Bakery module) and live for a set amount of time in its first incarnation. After the Design Initiative has completed its mission to build a new theme for Drupal 8 we can assess the situation and make plans for either folding changes back into Drupal.org or keeping the site in which case long term infrastructural issues would need to be met. It will be easier to meet infrastructural requirements if the site is setup for a defined period, so I think this is the best approach and gives us all a chance to really test drive something we've been talking about for years and see if it will work.
My vision is that our new site will give rise to new, better, drupal orientated designs - with UXers, themers, and other designers contributing design reviews and other feedback. A haven for designers wanting to get involved with Drupal, the goto place to find something to work on, or post work for review. A place where themers might be able to collaborate on new contrib designs, and where we can develop our new Drupal 8 core design.
We need people to get involved with this right now. We need several competent and reliable people to work with site building and maintenance to come on board. I'm very excited about this phase of the initiative and is my number #1 priority at the moment.
Comments
a couple of questions and a plug
so, I have a couple of questions about this initiative, Jeff
If you look a few years into the future and this initiative has succeeded, what does it look like? More to the point, what are the designers doing, what will they have done?
If it is about contrib themes, then making a friendlier environment is just one of many issues we need to address. We also need to address the question of motivation/incentive. What do designers get out of making a theme? It's a different motivation system to developers 'scratching and itch' and given the enormity of the task, the motivation/incentive needs to be strong. I think this is more of the reason we have so few really great contrib (or core) themes.
//edited out question about separate site, posted comment before Jeff finished writing his entire post!)//
Finally, I wanted to make sure that readers of this post were aware of the Prairie Initiative where we are working on making Drupal.org a more friendly, effective, collaborative place to work and much less scary to newcomers. This was inspired by the insight that we had in the usability team that our problem was not attracting UX designers to Drupal, but keeping them from running screaming away in terror. I wonder if similar is true for designers in general?
leisa reichelt - disambiguity.com
@leisa
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Hi Leisa, nice to see you here! Good plug for Prairie - being one of the most important community initiatives ever I am really glad you plugged it right away.
I think its all the thing you mention - I'm sure there are other use cases that might evolve, but those are the core things I view the site being utilized for.
Right now I have to focus on Drupal 8 Core, so contrib is a secondary goal, I'd really like to see how this process works (core design), and how it might fuel a collaborative contrib environment. I think its kind of difficult to predict how this might play out in the long run so I'd just like to see how it goes.
I would say that many designers do run screaming in terror (well, we know that they do, this is clear), so lets work to lower the attrition rate and retain these people, we really really need them and to value their contributions.
Sorry about the premature publish! I hit publish instead of preview about half way through... he he.
ah, then incentive is even more important!
if we're focusing on core theme here, then I think that the question of incentive is even more important.
nothing we do is going to stop designing a core theme being quite like entering the seventh circle of hell (let's not kid ourselves, it is always going to be tough)... so what can we do to make it so that designers actually get something out of it that they'll value.
The tough thing is that the better the designer, the more likelihood that they're already in a good job or have loads of clients so profile isn't necessarily going to be something they'll value, right? How can we sell this as something that will be worth the pain and (undoubted) public panning as well as hopefully, accolades.
Really pleased to see this being discussed early tho'. The more opportunity we have to address some of the foundation issues the more likely we are to actually solve some of the more critical challenge AND get a great theme in D8.
leisa reichelt - disambiguity.com
@leisa
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I think incentives are important and I tend to think that people do open source, pro bono type work for deeply personal reasons - I know I have my reasons - which is to make a difference in peoples lives and to give them free and open choices when in comes to software. The things I work on benefit millions of people, for me that's incentive - knowing I can make a difference, all be it a small drop in the ocean, never-the-less people all over the world benefit.
You know there's absolutely nothing in building and maintaining a core drupal theme other than a huge commitment of my time, being heckled from the sidelines and the weight of a deep sense of responsibility that I have to get things right.
Perhaps I'm being naive but I tend to think people are essentially good - that asked to make a contribution for the greater good they generally will - I know I and many other Drupalers already do, from both camps - design and developers, so I'm not sure what is being driven at here. I've never really heard designers shouting about needing incentives to contribute, but rather they need tools and an environment in which they can actually get things done.
perhaps call it motivation not incentive...
have you read Daniel Pink's book Drive? he talks about autonomy and mastery as being powerful motivators and part of what is most attractive for developers to the open source /FOSS movement.
these are the types of motivators I'm talking about - intrinsic (like mastery), not extrinsic (like money).
now think about the kinds of problems that we're asking designers to come and solve and the way that they have to solve them, particularly for a core theme. Are they high on mastery and autonomy? Nope. Quite the opposite.
And I think this is why despite that fact that many of us (I agree) are essentially good and want to make contributions to good things, very few actually commit to the level of effort and personal risk required to make amazing core themes for Drupal. It's also why so few developers are involved in writing lots of code for core and loads of them write amazing contrib modules. The intrinsic motivation just doesn't stack up.
If we want more designers working in Drupal and we want great designers working on a core theme, we need to face up to this and see what we can do about it. If anything. Then make them great tools and environments.
leisa reichelt - disambiguity.com
@leisa
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I think you make some good points here and we'll definitely need to be taking these sorts of things into account, sorry for the short reply, I really need to get cracking on some paperwork :)
Finally I have had some time
Finally I have had some time to think more on this topic and to become somewhat familiar with Pinks notions of Autonomy and Mastery. Pink appears quite reductionist in his thinking - for example, in essence explaining Autonomy as "self directed work" and Mastery as "getting better and better at something". The influence of intrinsic motivators in OS is well recorded and has been for many decades - this is not new. I recall readings on this back in my university days when I was minoring in Social Sciences, some 20 odd years ago. More up to date works are available however the findings are the same - that intrinsic motivators play a pivotal role in OS contributions. I think that relying on Pinks notions would be dangerous because they over-simplify a complex matrix of motivations - both intrinsic and extrinsic.
You said "very few actually commit to the level of effort and personal risk required to make amazing core themes for Drupal". This doesn't ring true for me - more than 40 people worked on Bartik. I'd say that was quite a few, and I personally witnessed many people make monumental efforts to improve Bartik's code.
You also said "It's also why so few developers are involved in writing lots of code for core and loads of them write amazing contrib modules". Well something like 900 or more people worked on Drupal 7, similarly large numbers on Drupal 6. Afaik this is more than Linux or Ubuntu. Yes there is clearly more autonomy when building contrib modules, however I would never agree there is less intrinsic reward working on core - what I would say is that the intrinsic motivators are different. In contrib you have a lot of freedom and you can scratch your own itch, in essence build something that you yourself need, which is a very high intrinsic motivator. There is more scope for "play" and there is simply more opportunity to build contrib projects. I would also argue that contrib has a much higher extrinsic payola because companies can gain high visibility through these contributions and cash in on them - whereas this is nearly impossible with core.
Core on the other hand offers something that no contrib project can ever offer - the fact that you get to contribute to something that will be used by millions of people - what I am talking about here is philanthropy - the knowing that your "private initiatives for public good" are actually changing the world. Very few contrib projects can offer this and the ones that can have such big developer followings they are literally ecosystems within the ecosystem - such as Views, CTools, CCK (D6) and Zen.
Clearly designers contribute to OS as well. There are some huge repositories of OS artwork available online such as iconarchive. Now its one thing to make a few simple icons or free Photoshop textures (both of which have the "I use it" intrinsic motivator), and quite another thing to design an entire theme - it requires many times the investment of time and energy. Therefor to get more theme designs we need a bigger motivator - we need to appeal to a deeper set of intrinsic values and IMO imbue designers "private initiatives for public good" with the same high level of value that we place on code contributions. I think this is absolutely key in retaining more designers in our community. The ugly truth here is that we have known this all along and quietly ignored it. For years designers have been telling us, we just never really heard them. I would also add that Drupal is now entering a phase of growth where the extrinsic vales of contributing OS themes starts to pass the cost/benefit ratio for private companies - enter the large commercial theme vendors who covet visibility, even notoriety, from their OS contributions. Again, as for contrib modules I think there is a much more complex array of motivators, both intrinsic and extrinsic - and for design at least neither have been fully realized. Yet.
To sum up, by and large I do agree with what you are saying, what I tend to disagree with is that the intrinsic values are unknown - these are incredibly well studied and widely documented. Its patently clear to me why and where we fail to deliver these in Drupal. I don't think we really need to retrace this well trodden path - in fact when I talk to the designers who have been pushing D4D for many years they seem very tired, worn out and sick to death of talking about this. What we need now is action, and due partly to severe time constraints the Design Initiative is operating within we have to mobilize primarily an action orientated plan. We have drawn on our own depth of experience, emerging trends in the design world and the legacy of discussion that has come before this even started. We simply don't have time to examine things once again and personally I am not convinced this will do our process a huge amount of good, in fact it may very well detract, destabilize and ultimately slow the process down, and time is one thing we do not have up our sleeve.
I do agree however that a long term strategy is required - and this is where Prairie can have the ultimate impact - in the longer term. The Design Initiative is by definition a short term project - we can all learn from this and take away what was good, and not so good, and incorporate these findings into our longer term strategies. Right now we don't have the luxury of 12 or 18 months up our sleeve, its more like 6 weeks to "game on", and we need to be ready for this.
Love to be involved
I would love to be involved. I do have time constraints(working on site redesign/update/overhaul), but am usually able to find additional time. I started out as a graphic designer, then went to print/logo design, then to web design in general, then to Drupal. I am a designer/artist at heart, and I've learned Drupal over the years(and continue to) from a designers perspective, so I share your outlook on things. As you know, it is an extremely large learning curve for designers to make the leap to Drupal, so most don't. So there is often a rift between designers, themers, builders, and coders. I don't think there needs to be. I really think a lot of developers would be more than happy about this as well. I would love to hear your ideas, and hope I can give some input that would be valuable as well.
thanks,
Jen
How far along are you
I'm pretty new to the web design community. I've worked with a few clients on a Drupal site though. I'm sold on the viability of the platform but have found it all to be a little overwhelming as I am indeed from the design side of the fence. If we're still in a phase that I'd be able to contribute I'd be happy to dedicate some of my time in the week to being a part of this project.
Best!