Voice of the Masses: Can Free Software do good design?
Simple question for our next podcast: Do you think Free Software projects are capable of implementing good design? We’re thinking mostly about UI, but process and usability are obviously closely related. Do you like Firefox’s new UI on Linux, or the way LibreOffice is going? Do GNU/Linux desktop environments look as good as their proprietary counterparts?
Let us know in the comments and we’ll include them in our podcast discussion. We’re hoping to record the next episode next week.
Also, sorry for the long delay between podcasts at the moment. Life is currently getting in the way for all of us, but we genuinely hope to be able to offer a more regular schedule again in the New Year. And we’ll try to record one more before Christmas. Perhaps with beer.
xx
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About The Author
Graham Morrison
A free software advocate and writer since the late 1990s, Graham is a lapsed KDE contributor and author of the Meeq MIDI step sequencer. @degville on Twitter.
While it’s easy enough to spot really bad design, either from an aesthetic or functional perspective. Good design, something better than passable , is more difficult.
Then there’s the awkward matter of personal taste.
I can’t remember finding any Free Software that was unusably bad from a design perspective, bug-riddled and generally broken is another matter.
I think the Cinnamon desktop is very well designed, both in terms of usability and visual appeal , so it looks like it can be done! I wish LibreOffice would look as appealing as, together with the desktop, I’m sure that would attract more people to Linux.
Good ideas don’t always get the feedback they deserve. Notable example, Canonical’s Unity design. The difference with free software is that everybody has a saying and an opinion that reflects back. If for example I don’t like something, I find someone else and we are two spreading our dislike, then we find 100 more other people, then a thousand, and now we have a negative movement that is able to move further down the line and urge communities to stir more turbulence. That is how things work in the free software world and in my perspective it is what holds things back. Too much liberty and the twisted entitlement of “You don’t do it like my favorite distro does, you don’t get my support, get lost.”.
At the same time, in the corporate and proprietary software world, they just do what they want for their ecosystem, and let people live with it, like it or not, and of course pay premium for it. And they definitely don’t give a damn about the end customer – just like when they switched to Ribbon UI and they forced armies of employees going to seminars to re-learn how to use the Office.
The nation-state mentality that characterizes the free software communities will always be a factor that will have the unjust power to destroy good ideas.
The GIMP and Blender are frequently held up as examples of bad open-source design. I love them both, and find them amazing tools to get things done quickly and efficiently. I suppose any opinion on design is going to be subjective.
Except Libreoffice. That’s objectively horrible.
OpenOffice is certainly an effective, well designed system, and far preferable to the expensive alternative. The classic Windows UI is much better laid out than the MS Office one. GIMP is also very useful.
IMO things like ‘design’ and ‘usability’ are fundamentally subjective, they require taking into account the interests of the user. I find that Macs aren’t usable, but a lot of people take this as the beacon / standard of usability. One true critique of the FOSS model is that ‘design by committee’ is often a bad thing; however, I think that in practice most projects are closer to a ‘benevolent dictator’ model when it comes to actual implementation of UI. I don’t think there’s a general pattern of ‘good design / bad design’ that’s far worse in FOSS. Especially, lots of Windows software is absolutely shocking from a design/UX perspective. The worse problem with FOSS is that users have bad experiences with getting the software working to begin with.
Eject a CD by dragging the CD Icon to the trash!?!? It’s design gone mad!
Indeed, there is subjectivity to the matter. However, If you ever experienced some form of education on this topic (there are some MOOCs available) you will find a emphasis of “good” design as the one with clear/strong objectivity and iteration based on measurements: Make a prototype. Devise a set of objective tests (i.e. measured real usage tests). Refine based on those measurements. Don’t be surprised if your initial prototype was way off. It usually is (as it was guided only by your own assumptions/biases). Make sure your tests cover a wide set of demographics.
(https://ubuntu-mate.community/t/would-you-find-this-caja-extension-useful/15350 Noble attempt, but IMHO wrong measurement)
FOSS has the access to wide demographics but good measurements can become a bit creepy (recording user’s behavior: timing interactions, usage patterns, audio comments, videos of posture and eye glaze…)
Canonical occasionally does some test internally and I’m aware of two occasions of such testing in GNOME. Please do comment if you know of any other.
When the resources are there, open source can be as well designed as any other software. Cinnamon certainly looks great and works well. After about six months using KDE, I returned to it recently and am in no rush to go anywhere else.
Good design is always is the eye of the beholder. Although did anyone actually like Windows 8?
Twice every week I have to endure the subtly bad design decision in MSwindows that makes it a racing cert that if something is conceptually simple and technically coherently it is eventually discarded. I do this because I can not convince my local community centre to give Linux a go. The reason they give – social grounds !
Absolutely, free software can do good design. The principles of good design aren’t terribly difficult. I found a good list of the basics, with links to other resources:
https://www.usability.gov/what-and-why/user-interface-design.html
A few examples of software I think have good UI design, in no particular order:
SMPlayer (media player)
VLC Media Player
Nemo (file manager in Linux Mint)
PCManFM (alternative file manager)
Synaptic (software manager for apt based systems)
Ark (compressed file tool)
Gnote (Tomboy fork written in C)
Personally, I do like the current Firefox main window UI. What you really need is visible, what you don’t need is in the menu. There are sensible defaults and the toolbars can be customized.
In contrast, the UI for getting additional addons is an example of bad UI design. It presents the user with a few options Mozilla thinks you would be interested in which take up a lot of space. To view the actual full list of available addons requires clicking another link at the bottom of the UI.
Yes, free software can can implement good UI design. As important as the UI in any single release of the software is the transition path for users from the old to the new. Who remembers the fuss when Microsoft introduced the ‘ribbon’ into MS Office, forcing users to relearn the entire software overnight? Lots of projects, like Firefox and GIMP, keep pace with user’s expectations without introducing too many changes at once.
For me good design comes down to having the same look and feel, including shortcuts and key presses, across applications and the desktop environment as a whole, which is probably why Mac OS gets such praise as they can control much of all of that for their environment.
Free software is always going to find that more difficult to achieve as different projects take different design decisions. However, KDE does a great job of maintaining a homogeneous design throughout the desktop and applications.
If truth is beauty and beauty truth then Open Source has the truth and so therefore must also have the beauty.