 Yeah, hello, I'm John from next job and also from open source design So I would just talk about combining two of the projects that I'm working on I want to have stickers later if you want to get some Gotta keep the sticker economy going So in this talk I'm going to show you five strategies By no means all, but five strategies that we're applying at the next job for open source design So first if you don't, like, can I have a show of hands when I know what the next job is? Okay, so most people, but I will explain it of course So next job essentially is a full suite of tools for keeping your data private within your organization or your personal data So we have file syncing and sharing, we have calendars, contacts, video calls, chats All sorts of things, we have an office suite, which is a bit of a collaboration We also have a bunch of AI integration, which is on-premise So you get the benefit of AI, but on your own server And yeah, it's kind of cool So, yeah, if you want to connect, there's my website, all the info is there But yeah, let me show you what I actually came here for So first strategy is structure So this is essentially like sort of the least you can do Or where you can start kind of category If you are an engineer, developer, or someone who has a project Or if you're not a developer, if you're someone within an open source project Then the basic thing you can do is give visibility to design And also to ensure that there is a place for designers that they have When they come, that they know where to continue or what to do And I will even show you some examples So one thing that we do, one of the first things that we do and what I always recommend to projects Is that you have an issue tag called design And I mean, some projects called UX slash UI or whatever, some people have different tags I just keep it simple, we just keep it simple in our project Just call it design, so just one design tag It's across the repositories and that's where you find the design issues That's where we open the issues That's where other designers can find the issues And that's where you can get started also, for example You can of course combine it with different other issue tags Like good first issue that you might be aware of that Which is an issue tag that can be used for people just getting started So if you combine design and good first issue You get good design and first issues So that's pretty cool And that is a really simple thing you can do in your project So if you don't do that right now, do it Yeah, first thing to do It's going to get harder now, but with the simplest one So next one is grouping design And this can be done in any sort of way This is one way we're doing As I said, next up is this whole suite of applications One thing that we have is the next up talk This is our chat and call and video call software And here we have a conversation called design to the public On our own instance This one, as it says, it's public, you can also join You can go there from next.com.com.slashdesign And this is a place where we group design So where you can join as a designer We're also a lot of developers hang out So people exchange information And yeah, just talk about design It's sort of, you don't have to be a designer To be in this group And there's, of course, other places as well Where you can group designers Like on GitHub or on whichever issue tracking system you use You can have these groups like apps We have apps to next talk slash designers So you can mention an entire group For review, for example, you can request a review from the designers So grouping people, giving them sort of a place to chat And not only among yourselves, but also with others With the engineers As something, for example, previously in this talk I said it's very important That design is not just a handover process But it's an iterative process Especially in open source Where there's traditionally very few designers Has to be very collaborative Then the third example For this section is the last example It has specific pages So this is our design page It's next.com.slashdesign It's not the whole page, of course It's more here with a whole bunch of text And info, a lot of what I'm talking about now Which serves as sort of an entry point And then a more advanced thing And yeah, this is probably a bit more difficult If you don't have it yet But it's having design guidelines of some sort Having components Having just saying, hey, this is the brand guidelines This is our logo These are our colors This is what we use Wording guidelines Is also something that is not very often used They're like being friendly Or which type of capitalization You use or which kind of language you use And they're like not of language As in English or German or whatever But which kind of type of tone You're friendly or you're serious and so on It's also very interesting to have guidelines from that All right, so that's the first one Having a structure The next one is having a process And making that process open So in this section we'll talk about specifications And mockups, how we do that And how we involve engineers and iterate Again, coming back to this, it's a very iterative process And a very collaborative process And some examples for that As I said before, we have labels here This design label There's a whole bunch of other labels And this is a specification That is done where the developers are on GitHub now So this is for an improvement to a sharing design A flow that I wrote You see specification, first a bunch of text Down here there's some mockups And then there's some more text So it's a place where developers work It's on the issue tracker Where we also do the design specification It's very important because then everyone gets involved And it's not a fixed thing Then we're done with the mockups And then we throw it over the wall But it's like, it's a discussion Yeah, so specifications and issues That's a very important one Next example is maybe another software It's called PenPot It's basically an open source mockup tool You can also use it actually to create slides My colleague Namisha actually does her slides with it These slides were not done in the LibreOffice But she does her slides with PenPot Which is very cool So it's sort of an alternative to Figma Or Miro, these whiteboarding tools And we use that for mockups And it's very cool, very useful open source And I can only really wholeheartedly recommend it And yeah, we also do that in the open And so we invite new people who want to contribute And we also invite developers So yeah, because we're two full-time designers On the team only, with a lot of engineers But there's a whole bunch of people in this PenPot organization And you should be very liberal with inviting people Because then people can do stuff by themselves Yeah, developers of Groupware, for example Can do mockups Or any developer can mock up their own app, their own feature And then you can talk with them and do some modifications And that way you sort of teach designs well Which is a very important thing In tool Next example, or not next example So this was the last example for design process Next strategy is research And especially in open source Yeah, we don't have a lot of resources We're very, it's not a very small community And thankfully we're growing and we're big As you can see from the conference But designers in open source are still fewer So it's very important to use existing material And to also maximize the limited resources that you have And by that I mean, yeah, you can just get inspired a lot I mean, as everyone does, as every project does You look at other projects, you look at what works A lot of projects, in closed source projects blog about their usability tests Or about their design research There's a lot to learn that is out there And you don't need to always start from zero So, so again, here for our Next Cloud Talk app Which you see in this column There's a lot of nice green checkmarks Because we have a bunch of cool features that others don't have And we did this gap analysis with other solutions Like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Google Meets, Slack and Discord And we also did others, of course, but these are the main ones And we just did a simple overview And this gives us a feeling of like Where are we missing things? Where are we positioned very well? What do we need to look into? Because then we would just, for example, yeah The last one is the disposal of the meetings Yeah, you see there's already an issue created for this We don't have an issue, yeah And then we would go to the other solutions Look at how they do it And simply see if there's like sort of a common thread That we can build on That we can sort of, yeah, make it look very similar Also to pick up people who are switching To an open source solution from a proprietary solution To make it look simpler As a next example, there's usability testing This is, of course, a bit more of an investment In this case, this was done with a partner organization sort of It's a usability agency or design agency Open source design agency called Pula Design And they did usability testing for our forms app For our next-gen forms And this, I think, is a very cool display of results, yeah So basically, you see it was done with five participants One participant per column And a bunch of tasks You see the first tasks were rather easy, yeah And then here, chairing the form was an issue, yeah So you immediately see if this is something you need to fix now And so it shows you immediately As someone who is not involved with the project Yeah, where the difficulties are Which is also very good, very important Because you as a person who works on the project You tend to not see the issues So usability testing is really good A really good tool And it doesn't have to be with five people Yeah, it can be three people Yeah, three people should be the minimum, I would say But it's, you should do it Agencies do it with 12 people That's like, yeah, you don't need that But just show it to a few people who are not so technical Yeah, to a few people who don't know the project To a few people at the conference, for example And just, yeah, see what they all they use it And then don't help out And let them make mistakes Because it's not their mistakes, it's mistakes with your software You already see that I can do it We'll talk about just what we did to test them But then we'll continue Next thing is surveys It's a very quick tool to see also, yeah Where you stand with your, with issues With features or anything Of course, this is more of a quantitative approach Where you just get, like you should get a lot of responses Where usability testing is quantitative So you get one-on-one feedback This is a quantitative approach So, yeah, you should get, you should spread it far and wide And you always need to be aware of a bias So if you, if you tweet it from your project account Maybe the people who are replying They already know your project well So you need to just keep that in mind, you know But yeah, you can also do that with next law forms Yeah, we have a forms app which is open source Google Forms And we periodically do surveys for next law apps Like about our Kanban board app Or about next law forms itself Just like here And this helps a bunch to just see, yeah Where we stand and what we can improve And what people are expecting So then, yeah, that was that with research Now we come to the fourth point Community It's one of you, hello So it's very important to get people, yeah Excited about design and involve a wider community Not just as I said before Not just the designers Or the people who would identify themselves with designers But also the engineers Because everyone sort of can, I mean You would think almost every engineer has something to say about design If you look at some open source communities So you should channel it into the right avenues So let me give you some examples We have lists from out of just talking with people At our next law conference in person And giving them design reviews We have a regular design review call every week It's at Tuesday at 2pm or whatever It doesn't really matter Yeah, except if you want to join You're very welcome But we have a weekly Regular review call for one hour So it's not that long So that's a short regular review call For anyone who wants their design reviewed In the community It can be an app that an employee works on Or a community member, whatever But we have this open forum sort of And where also everyone can join Yeah, it's a Whether a designer studied or whatever Or an engineer or a marketing person No background whatsoever Yeah, it's all cool Everyone can give feedback on what's off Or if something is weird or not understandable So this is a very, very cool tool And then we take notes during the calls And they're then put into issues Then sort of a checklist That's a Directly a checklist for the developer What is very important is that This needs to come Like you need to involve the people The maintainers of the app So the developers need to come to you You can't just do this review without them present And then give them a list This is a recipe for disaster Essentially So what this is We're just very open We ask like a lot Yeah, we have to ask a lot again and again But when people come It's usually very helpful to them And yeah So that's one example And I can really recommend it If you want to get involved also Come join this course Next example And this is a very current one Because you can actually participate This is something that we posted about yesterday Because for our current Next to Hub 5 development cycle We're looking for you to design Document templates So we have these I mean when you create a new file Create a new document Or presentation Or a card sheet Or a drawing document We have these templates Yeah So these are two templates that I actually designed Yeah Captured rather simple Because creating templates Actually very difficult But maybe you have some cool templates Maybe you have some nice ideas And you can submit them So this is a current community contribution effort Yeah, you can go to next.com slash blog And there's a post with more info on that Would be cool to have your designs submitted to them They will be It's much like the Maybe you know from Google to the Or some other open source projects I think this background For background It's called Background photo submission process Yeah For the desktop background So in this case it's a document template That will be shipped with maximum Yeah So yeah community involvement Very important And then like that You can grow a community And make people like at the very least Even if they don't join It's first you have a very cool template And they can say hey I contributed to an open source project In a very visible way And it's a very cool thing That they can show their friends And then maybe they can work So yeah Next thing And this is the last strategy Is collaboration Because I mean we're open source Yeah, we're all here But I often see And what I've seen through the years Basically of working in open source Is that oftentimes the projects Are still very insular I mean oftentimes there's collaboration But more often than not It's sort of a very very I mean I don't want to say world guard I mean because that has a certain connotation But you need to understand That you are not the only project There's a whole bunch of other projects out there That you can do cool collaborations with And there's of course also community developers Which are not necessarily in your direct sphere Of influence So let me show you some examples So for example with Collabra We will probably know They will be in our office online And Collabra will partner it To create next cloud office This is basically built on Collabra online And we work very closely with them Yeah, we will call every week To do adjustments And to see what a very interesting strategy And stuff And really helps us to integrate Very very very closely So you have a very nicely integrated Office suite Directly inside next cloud And they also get a lot of feedback From our side And this is really a very cool partnership We have because we both Yeah, we have a limited amount of designers But every time we do like this ping pong Among us we get new ideas and everything It's very cool So partnerships with other projects We really really recommend This is the first example So the next one is community developers So we have our app store Our next cloud app store They see community apps like Forms that I mentioned before And next cloud maps actually Tasks in this case And the next one news The news reader like As to Google news That they shopped on a few years ago And so these community developers Also often come to our design team channel And ask if they can have a design review And then it's very useful for them Because then we do the review And we have a bunch of other people Who are also engineers Or developers from other apps And they say oh but in my app It's different or in my app We do it like that And that way even It gets like sort of Gets consistent Without the desires necessarily Always having like The funds on it And so it creates this exchange Between the maintainers of the different apps as well So the For example the different Android apps Or the different iOS apps from next cloud They all exchange sort of They're like oh this is how you do it Oh yeah we have this library and so on So this is very cool And creating this flow of information Between the teams as well Then next example And the second to last example I think Is the GNOME online account So probably no GNOME The open source desktop Has this online accounts functionality Which I think is super cool Because this is also in Google actually Immediately when you install it When you start it for the first time You see the screen And you can add an account So of course they show When you see the sign on And then Google is popular But then they show next cloud So you can add your next cloud account Directly when you install your system So this has been an effort Like I actually initially started out In the GNOME community sort of Because they are very designed For the community Really like thanks to the GNOME community I have to say Because a lot of these techniques Are also inspired by GNOME And so this Yeah it's already there since a long time Comes through partnership to talking with them And we're always trying to link up more apps So that they can be synced Because like that you have a whole experience Yeah just like I mean We need to compete against the lights of Apple Which sync everything You don't even need to think about And we have the moving parts We just need to talk to each other And make it work So this is another very cool thing Yeah just talk to projects that are relevant to you They do similar things Just on a different platform On mobile and desktop or whatever And make it work Last example Or last yeah Last example I would say The open source design community As I mentioned that Samsung as well And me are involved in We're a loose collective of designers And developers as well Anyone who cares about design And open source And wants to raise the profile of it You can join Yeah anyone of you can be part of it We're at opensourcedesign.net Now you will find this page We also have a job award You can find job postings From open source companies About design roles You can post one Yeah if you need a design Yeah you can find a job We have a forum where you can get involved Yeah so engage with the wider audience And come to a conference like this I don't need to tell you all that But yeah And that's that To get involved at nexthelp.com slash design Or get involved with any open source project As a designer yeah We need more designers In open source And yeah So come to Nexthel Or come to open source design And get some stickers Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you for talking to me Yeah are there any questions Thank you Thank you So I'll give you the So you mentioned in strategy number four That you have a conference for every Tuesday At central european time Yeah so that's why I said like The time doesn't really matter Like in our case Unfortunately it's central european time On tuesday it's two yeah So it's Spring is really out Exactly yeah So I was actually in japan for two and a half months Just just now So it was in the evening like at 10 I think So I mean yeah I participated But it's a tough thing So what you could do is like Depending on how your community is Is distributed Like for example with open source design We have a monthly call And we have two Yeah we have one For like more european Equest sort of Time zone African time zone And one for more asian Sort of pacific time zone So you could do that for example Yeah it's unfortunately Time zones I think so And yeah That's a glow right I mean we're not on a flatter What more questions? You mentioned about the design of the process So are those limited to be nice Cloud projects that you take with it Or any teleprompter that can come at it That's for a new Yeah so in our case In the design we recall that I mentioned Those are specifically related to next-told And next-told apps But with open source design for example We have a forum So you could ask for a review there Or we're often at conferences For example I mean we also had a track at FossAsia I think in 2017 And we should get a booth up and running again Maybe next year But we often do We have a track every year at FossDamn Actually in Brussels And there we sometimes also have a table Where we have people come to us And they can do ad hoc reviews I mean you can also Maybe just I don't know what it's like I'm just going to say you can come to us And just ask it Like if we want to have a look at your app And we're going to give you some hints or something Right? Thank you