Open Source Design

Details on contributing to our design process

Open source Design @ Ushahidi

Ushahidi is a globally recognized digital humanitarian tool built by a team of 30 people in 10 countries. We have a decade of experience in remote UX design collaboration. Our research and our experience show that, for designers, too many roadblocks (e.g. alien taxonomy, complex, developer focussed software tools, extrinsic processes, etc.) exist between core developer teams in OSS and designers who are willing to contribute. These act as barriers to entry that disincentivize design contributions to OSS.

We are proposing to enable design contributions to OSS by creating an accessible process and taxonomy, as well as by developing and optimizing a recreatable workflow, that, where necessary, is supplemented through light-weight integrations with software tools.

We started this work during the Mozilla Open Leaders program 6 with the project 'Open source Design @ Ushahidi' and we're continuing to develop this process through Design Jams globally with our partners Designit and Adobe Xd as well as through our wider OSS engagement through funds such as DIAL (Digital Impact alliance). With support and advice from the Open Source Design community.

If you're looking to contribute and participate in this effort you can contact the Ushahidi design team at Design@ushahidi.com or through the Get in Touch section of these docs.