Design Challenges

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Jeff Burnz's picture

The Design Initiative has three main goals - build a new core theme, build a new collaboration site for designers, and community outreach. The new core theme initiative is well under way and we're tantalizingly close to design.drupal.org becoming a reality. What we need to do now is step up a gear and start thinking about outreach.

The undeniable focus of outreach is to get more designers involved with Drupal. Designers find it hard to know where to start in Drupal - how to get involved, what can they work on, where can they make a difference. I think we can make this a lot easier - with Design Challenges.

What is a Design Challenge?

Simple - anything that needs designing can be a design challenge. Lets throw a few ideas out there:

  • Design our new core theme
  • Design some banners for the Drupal Association
  • New Drupal branding material
  • UX/UI issues that need design work
  • Solve accessibility issues
  • Icon sets for Drupal themes
  • Drupal tshirts, stickers, or other merchandise
  • Drupalcon or Drupal camp theme designs
  • and more..

How could this work?

It could work like this:

  1. Users post a "Challenge nomination" - basically an outline of the requirements, constraints, deadline and so on.
  2. Users can comment and vote on these nominations.
  3. Challenges that are popular/good/needed become full Challenges.
  4. Designers can then take up the challenge and start posting designs.
  5. The Challenger (whoever posted the challenge) chooses the design they want to use.

Lets take an example. The Drupal Association needs some new banners to advertise something. They post a challenge nomination - clearly this is something that is needed, so it gets promoted to a full Challenge. Designers can then start discussing this, posting sketches and comps etc, even collaborating by posting layered files and sharing the work load. The DA gets involved in the process via comments/discussion and ultimately chooses the banners they think are most suitable, and the challenge is complete.

For those of you in the know this is very similar to what Mozilla have been doing for ages with their Creative Collective, posting all sorts of cool design challenges and getting lots of people involved in what they call a "worldwide community of open source designers". Mozilla extended the original idea with Personas and tshirt designs both of which have been outrageously successful.

I really hope the community backs this idea, we sorely need easier ways for designers to get involved in the Drupal community and I can see this blossoming into something truly awesome. Love to hear your ideas and feedback.

Comments

How can "challenges" lead to deeper involvement?

davideads's picture

I think the idea of challenges, with a community of people to validate and promote ideas, is compelling. I'm curious how challenges can apply to bigger, more holistic UI/UX and design problems, and the best ways to use the model to promote deeper involvement and broader initiative leadership.

What is the governance structure of the design initiative? It seems like an interesting initiative to discuss using a "keyholder" consensus model for decision making. (I may need to dust off my consensus project governance draft and post it to this group some day...)

Consensus is very important

Jeff Burnz's picture

Honestly I don't know much about these sorts of things so can't really engage in this sort of discussion. However I tend to think the initiative runs on inspirational idealism and outrageous fortune :)

What I can say is that consensus is very important, I don't hold any special chair-of-authority or possess any special decision making powers. I suspect I can act as some sort of benevolent leader, but apart from providing leadership, ideas and energy I can't really do much without the support, participation and collaboration of the wider community. Its up to us, not me.

Fostering consensus...

davideads's picture

I've been playing around with how to implement <a href='http://www.consensus.net">formal consensus in a Drupal project of a while now. FreeGeek Chicago, a nonprofit I helped start (and remain as a volunteer staff person) uses our own version of formal consensus with great success.

FreeGeek's structure looks like this: All meetings are open. We have a body called "community council" which is the primary decision-making body. Community council consists of anyone who volunteers 30 hours every three months and shows up to half the meetings, and operates via a straight vote. We also have a small staff of volunteers (currently four people) who handle anything that requires privacy, discretion, or a significantly higher level of responsibility: banking and taxes, handling conflicts, dealing with volunteers with mental and physical illness, and so forth. Staff can be nominated by anyone, but must be approved by a 2/3rd majority of the community council.

Staff operate via formal consensus, but on a time limited basis. That means for any proposal, a staff person either a) Support a proposal, b) stand aside (you don't disagree, but you don't have time/energy/interest to help pursue the proposal, and c) veto. A single veto ends a proposal forever. But you only get one veto per five year term.

The idea of formal consensus is to never use option c), the nuclear option. Instead, the threat of an absolute veto (and the fact you only get to use it once every five years) is meant to encourage more and better discussion, as well as compromise. The structure of formal consensus deals with some of the paradoxes of direct democracy by addressing the "tyranny of the majority".

In open source communities like Drupal, there's LOTS of people using Drupal. Let's say a project or initiative decided to try out formal governance. If they adopt direct democracy, developers would always have numerical superiority, even though a designer working on a mobile app could represent thousands of Drupal users or a sysadmin might represent a company of 500 workers, while a developer working for a research institution or small shop might represent a few dozen, or simply themselves. Whereas if a project (and this continues to seem to me a pretty wild idea) implemented formal consensus, the primary decision-making body could consist of a couple designers, a couple developers, and a sysadmin chosen for their good judgement, trust-worthiness, and special talents as well as their technical skill. I feel like such a group could be more innovative, more sustainable, and retain more valuable contributors in the long haul than the traditional FLOSS model of rough consensus and running code.

Okay, maybe that's a crazy way for a Drupal project to run. But I've found the best way to move from benevolent dictator to leader among equals is to institute some lightweight, sane rules for who gets to lead and how they get to lead. It took my organization three years to implement our community council, but as soon as we did, participation and leadership in the community really took off (100-200 participants earned computers from 2005 - 2009, 500 earned computers in 2010, over 500 people have earned computers as of May, 2011).

The thing that vexes me is the freedom and power we have in being urban and highly local, and how that translates to a Drupal initiative: We have lots of face to face time, and very clear rules(the motto: we don't care if you just got out of church, or just got out of the joint as long as you're willing to learn and be respectful), and very simple barriers to entry (show up on time for orientation). FLOSS projects have a lot more challenges in terms of barrier to entry, and a lot more mis-communication because of the medium.

Like.

JDSaward's picture

I like the a), b), c) consensus structure outlined above, very much.

I see so many creative impulses stymied by people vetoing. Or relentlessly arguing against something that they could just stand aside from.

Yeah.. let's reign in the vetoers.

All power to the yes sayers, and the stand-asiders! :)

Was doing social distancing before it was cool.

Actually I think this is way

Jeff Burnz's picture

Actually I think this is way out of place - you're approaching this as a governance issue, we approach this as a project management issue. We're talking about design and theme development, you're talking about a way of running an organization. I just don't see how they are related, the DA is our organ, we are merely projects endorsed by the community, granted the opportunity to make something cool happen.

Can I please ask we keep this thread about design and for designers, this seems quite out of place here.

I think this actually applies

davideads's picture

I think this actually applies pretty directly. You're completely right that I'm approaching encouraging, rewarding, and retaining designers and making choices about design as a governance issue. Our organization is more a community-owned project more than a traditional incorporated non-profit -- a street corner version of an open source project. The question of how to organically create community guidelines and practices that make it easier for people with important perspectives but higher barriers to entry to participate in a project seems at the heart of the pain over design decisions in Drupal.

My current theory, based on my experience, is that if you want to encourage participation of a group of a people (like designers, spanish speakers, women, etc), because they have something important to contribute to your problem, you should give a designer or two an equal say in the most important decisions. It sets a powerful example, keeps everybody honest, but doesn't burden day-to-day efficiency.

I think if we only see the initiatives as project management issues, we're missing an opportunity to create a healthier community, one that takes what we mean when we say "we" seriously. I didn't mean to sidetrack your discussion, but I'd be interested in talking with you in private about floss governance more if you have some time.

Without stating the obvious,

Andy Britton's picture

Without stating the obvious, the example you've mentioned has happened, see http://groups.drupal.org/node/134999.

I've brought this issue up a few times in various discussions and also tried to add it to the pain points of the prairie initiative but sadly the interest didn't seem there. I can completley understand that Drupal is code focused or at least has been up until the last few years but the design side of Drupal seems to be taking peoples interest. Now that design is in the initiatives and also something on alot of the communities radar I'd love to see more effort put in to giving designers that are in the community a way to contribute.

The issue that keeps getting repeated is that there currently isn't a means for designers to contribute back to the project. This is a big issue and is preventing Drupal from having the same kind of designer participation as other CMS' that promote designer participation and also market their software not just to coders, Expression Engine is an example.

I firmly believe that this idea would open up a lot of possibilities and start collaborations that would benefit the community in several ways which have been covered in your original post. Think for example that if a designer could post up a PSD/PNG/AI for use as a contrib project a themer could work his/her magic and there's another contrib theme added to the collection. A module developer wants some icons or fancy looking css added to a module they are developing, not a problem there's a means for him to find someone. I've got atleast 3 PSD mockups that I've been wanting to contribute to a community project to bring some fresh themes to the contrib projects. Sadly though, I haven't found the means to do such a venture and when trying to discuss this issue only 3/4 people have joined in.

This would work, I chose would rather than could as it's happening in other communities like you've mentioned with Mozilla so we can see it works.

breakdown the barriers

Jeff Burnz's picture

Sadly though, I haven't found the means to do such a venture and when trying to discuss this issue only 3/4 people have joined in

I'm gonna bet the biggest reason is that people don't know it exists. The problem is the enormous investment required in "learning" where shit happens, then how it happens, then dipping the toe in, occasionally getting burned, the maybe, if you are really really dedicated, you might have some success. You have to be crazy dedicated to get things done in Drupal, and its many times more crazy if you're a designer and want to contribute. We HAVE to lower these barriers - in fact we have to drop the barriers to near zero.

leisareichelt's picture

Andy, I'm not sure where you got the impression that Prairie Initiative is not interested in this - in fact, I think we're example of this concept in action, except we're trying to do it in a space where we collaborate with developers/themers/docs people etc. in the process. And we totally share your pain.

It can be very difficult to go from PSD to code if you're working on either Drupal Core or Drupal.org - the development process and developers who work in these spaces are really rare and really busy. Tying to lower the barrier for developers to be able to bring design work to life is exactly what Prairie is working on right now as we try to move from PSD ( contributed by a designer after multiple UX people contributed wireframes) to live code. There are lots of logistical/non designing challenges here that need to be resolved somehow. It's given me a big appreciation for how hard it is to get started contributing as a developer as well.

We're also working on trying to resolve the issue of people not finding out about things they'd be interested in via better notifications.

There are a few design challenges available over at Prairie now, but they are all bound up in Drupal.org meaning that getting them live will be a world of pain/compromise (am I selling it well?!)

Also, did you ever see out attempt at micro projects when we were doing D7UX? That was also an initiative to help get more UX ppl in the community. (this was before I realised that attracting designers/uxers to Drupal is not the problem - keeping them, out attrition rate, that's the big problem.

leisa reichelt - disambiguity.com
@leisa

Leisa, I think at the time

Andy Britton's picture

Leisa, I think at the time when I first mentioned this kind of idea here http://groups.drupal.org/node/133169#comment-439704 it was probably a completely different view to the discussions that were taking place(no one from what I can/could see had mentioned designer participation) so it may have been overlooked or missed. I'd been discussing this issue with one of the UX team that suggested throwing my idea into the discussion to see what solutions could be discussed and as a way of bringing the idea to light. I've been following the prairie initiative for some time and think that it would be a great place for this idea to be discussed inconjunction with the design initiative. The more momentum that can get behind this issue the more chance I see it as having any kind of success. A solution that me and Jeff had discussed in another post http://groups.drupal.org/node/135379 was using the project pages in a way that designers could create a project and then tag it with something like "needs a themer" which is where I think the prairie initiative would help out a tonne.

Design Challenges are a great

Jeff Burnz's picture

Design Challenges are a great answer to your comment in the other thread. I think Prairie is very much aware of the designer contributor and there is probably some cross pollination that could take place (for example we are likely to explore reputation systems).

Love to hear more feedback on Design Challenge concept :)

You can count on me to help

alexrayu's picture

You can count on me to help if needed. Either here or at Prarie proj. Tell me where I can help.

Hey dude, I'll reach out to

Jeff Burnz's picture

Hey dude, I'll reach out to you later in the week, I think we could use your skills for this - we definitely will need more people to stand up and be site maintainers (for design.drupal.org) and to help with site building etc. Cheers!

be confident

eigentor's picture

@Andy Britton As an open source community, Drupal is very much a "scratch your own itch" Doocracy. So only people that feel the pain personally and are inside the community long enough and are dedicated in an almost mad way as Jeff describes will suffer enough to start working on it.

Until now the critical mass just wasn't there. But there are a lot of people that do not have the initiative power to sail against the wind, but still would love to contribute inside the community. So an official project like Jeffs or Prairie, that is semi-official is a good chance to gather forces and try again.

What I've learnt is that it does not really pay to fight the windmills. The entire thing takes endurance and rather one has to follow one's vision and try to find people sharing it. I feel it is very much the "Don't over-estimate what you can do in one year, but don't under-estimate what you can do in five" thing.
It cannot be over-estimated that we got a new frontend theme into D7 with Bartik. This was herculean and mercilessly showed us all the lacking infrastructure to even do it. But we did it.
And we will do more, but it just takes time.
If you got something to contribute, a way to get there is to ask knowledgable people that might guide you to a place where flowers blossom :)

Life is a journey, not a destination

LOL, yeah we're a bunch of

Jeff Burnz's picture

LOL, yeah we're a bunch of crazy cats alright. You're right, its much better to plan long term and think about things as a marathon, rather than a 100 yard sprint. That's why Design Initiative has actually been in the planning for a long time and the Design Challenges being so well tested in Open Source was adopted as a positive example of proactive outreach, its a great way for designers to get involved and contribute the best way they know how - by designing stuff! :)

exciting

marcrobinsone's picture

This sounds like a very exciting crowd-sourcing concept! Subscribing.

Important discussion

roseba's picture

I echo the sentiments voiced is a lot of these comments. I come from a production background, which equals light on computer theory, heavy on learning to get stuff done by just doing it.

The barriers on really getting in are enormous, even if you aren't a complete noob to technology.

Statements like, "If you want to participate, start with IRC. Or just log into GIT hub and contribute". I can't tell you how hard it is to get started with that if you have no experience with it. There is an assumption that this is the baseline. It may be a baseline if you are an application developer by trade, or someone who works heavily with versioning repositories. But if your background comes from a more front-end, the barriers require a lot more technical knowledge than one uses in their day-to-day work.

Also, while it may be good for me to use linux shell commands, and learn how to configure XAMP environments, it is a barrier to getting started in Drupal for those who don't have the background. Documentation on all of this stuff is written from and to people who already have a leg up on technical knowledge so it can be very frustrating. (I know Acquia has a DAMP build, but that's besides the point.)

I would like to contribute a lot more to the project but I have so much learning to do, just to get at a baseline where I can be helpful to others.

One of the things my colleague mentioned to me about modules is that there is documentation on how to install, and sometimes how it works. Documentation is extremely thin on how to use. Many modules are not simply, go to the setting page and it's obvious to configure. Also, screenshots on the main module page are useful.

I know I went a little off topic, but I hope it's taken with the attitude that I'm trying to contribute positive feedback.

Love to be involved

g76's picture

I started out as a designer and graphic artist, my whole journey with Drupal has been from a designer's(and non-coders) perspective. I would love to be involved.

Great discussion

mpearrow's picture

This is such an important dialog to have and I think Drupal's continuing growth and success hinges upon the integration of {interaction,graphic,information} design and development.

If you haven't already read it, I highly recommend The Inmates are Running the Asylum by Alan Cooper. It's a pretty quick read and I think pulls together some of the concepts that are being discussed here.

I'm quite excited to see an

_gramur's picture

I'm quite excited to see an initiative like this being done in Drupal. It has been a challenge on its own to attract designers to Drupal. I'm thinking an open collaboration like this is what the Drupal community needs.

Theme development

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