Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
Titre : OPEN SOURCE DESIGN
Design is a complex issue, it's a massive issue. It's so big that you can find more books than you can squeeze into a normal bookshelf on the subject of “What Design Is”. It's so big that it can become overly complex to be usable.
So, personally I skip it, and boil it down to: “Design is Communication”. I also skip the massive amount of text written on “What Communication Is” and boil that down to “Communication is the activity of a Community”.
With communication you cannot avoid but be a part of a community; without it you cannot have one. When you exchange information you are a part of each other. If you can't exchange information you can never ever form a community.
So why is it that the act of creating communication - of design - is considered something best done either in isolation or by a dictator with scared designers? I use “his” because this aspect of creativity is a role often reserved for (white) men - the lone genius toiling away with his grand scheme.
Now design is a matter of knowing what NOT to add to something – it's having a design language, a goal, and then staying true to that goal so as to make it unified. That all parts of the design follow this goal.
When you're an overlord whose word is law in a design group, this form of unity is easy. It's your vision or everyone is fired.
But then you leave. Sadly, you might die, or you might quit and leave behind is a group of underlings who are drilled, schooled and perfected in the art of following your every whim, anticipating your wishes and ideals, and defending their job through the act of obedience.
And the design work crashes. It crashes so bad that firemen would have to cut people out with the jaws of life from the wreckage of the design being done. Either the sudden freedom causes everyone to joyously do whatever they feel like, or they will jockey for your vacant position, or they will simply flop around like a stunned haddock on the neo-modernist, white painted office floor.
What Open Source Development has shown us is that nothing can beat a community doing its work in the open, where as many as possible are invited to contribute, edit and change. To build on the work being done. Stand on the shoulders of giants.
If this flat work method has worked for programming, why is it that design efforts of the same ideal are met with exclamations of “Design by Committee”?
Yes, it's harder to build a community. It's harder being so clear with your vision that anyone can see it and understand it. It's really difficult when the design language needs to be defined in detail but I want to claim that it will always be worth it.
We have chosen to agree to a description of What Design Is that tells us that it's an elite’s game, it's something done by people better than us, with sharper slacks than us, using better headsets than us, while they use their media-training savvy to hand-gesture-talk to us from a stage about how good they are. Where the value of design is measured in the number of “convergences”, “visual stories” and “engagements” that the designer can squeeze into a five minute Ted-talk-style presentation.
All it takes is that we all make an effort being inclusive, open, active and communicative. That we start a design project not just by making the best design available, but by being able to describe the design language we intend to use. The visions we're heading for.
The KDE Visual Design Group is based on these notions - everyone can and should be involved in the design work. I'll write a monthly column trying to go into the challenges and gains of this idea of Open Source Design. The wins and the fails.