Eriol Fox
Eriol has been working as a designer for 10+ years working in for-profits and then NGO’s and open-source software organisations, working on complex problems like sustainable food systems, peace-building and crisis response technology. Eriol now works at Superbloom design, research, open-source and technology projects.
Eriol is a part-time funded PhD researcher at Newcastle University’s Open Lab looking at how designers participate in humanitarian and human rights focussed open-source software projects.
They are also part of the core teams at Open Source Design (http://opensourcedesign.net/) and Human Rights Centred Design working group (https://hrcd.pubpub.org/) and Sustain UX & Design working group (https://sustainoss.org/working-groups/design-and-ux/) and help hosts podcast about open source and design (https://sosdesign.sustainoss.org/)
Eriol is a non-binary, queer person who uses they/them pronouns.
Sessions
In October 2023 Superbloom.design published findings from 10-16 week diary studies reported by designers actively working on OSS contributions. The diary studies aim was to investigate some of the key questions relating to design in OSS and fill some of the larger systemic “gaps” of information from non-code contributors’ experiences in OSS. There is existing research about designers in open source, but it has focused on analysis of data on issue trackers or interviews with designers.
This session will cover an overview of the study, some of the key learnings and recommendations from Superbloom Designers on how to improve and progress design in OSS.
https://github.com/sprblm/Diary-Studies-Designers-in-OSS
We plan to do a one day design workshop/hackathon that will be from 6 hours and focus on how non-code contributions, especially designers can participate in OSS projects more clearly and successfully. As an org that is committed to improving civic tech and human rights tech, the workshop examples will use projects like misinformation reporting, private messaging and private browsers as examples to work on. There will be content for potential attendees to read and understand ahead of the workshop and if some people want to prepare ahead of the workshop they can.
As non-coders, approaching an OSS project and wanting to contribute there can be barriers to starting. Am I welcome? How do I understand the project more? How do I get started? we'll be ensuring that a contribution is made at the end of the workshop to the projects open repos in relation to existing real issues.