The KDE Visual Design Group

Many large open-source projects organize a yearly conference to cover new technical ground, as well as provide an opportunity for contributors to mingle, put faces to the IRC nicknames they are used to working with, and build up inspiration and motivation. The KDE community organizes Akademy, which was held in Brno, Czech Republic this year, as its annual event. Not all of the talks on the program are strictly technical, though, and Andrew Lake used this opportunity to give a talk entitled "Community Design and the KDE Visual Design Group," which highlighted the efforts of a new group of KDE contributors focused specifically on design issues.

Introducing the Visual Design Group

Lake presented the newly formed KDE Visual Design Group (VDG), a virtual studio that was officially started earlier this year to serve all of the KDE community's visual design needs. He explained that the VDG tries to perform design in the open as much as possible, naming this process "community design." This openness, he said, is the "most important thing". Everyone is welcome to participate, regardless of skill level, and the community tries to maintain a positive environment.

The group was created to combat two myths about design, he said: first, that "only privileged people can participate" and second, the idea of the "lone genius" designer. Citing Steve Jobs as a negative example of the "lone genius" model, Lake said he rejects the notion that someone has to be a jerk in order to be a designer, saying it drove him "batshit crazy." Lake is a longtime KDE fan and had wanted to participate in design, he explained. But, in his view, KDE is a community, and it is difficult to talk sincerely about design without that discussion also being a community-driven exercise.

He praised the KDE project's earlier work on Oxygen, calling it "a great icon set and style in general". But, in his opinion, the problem is that if you take one brilliant designer and tell them to "go be brilliant," they will work furiously, then at some point burn out and be unable to continue. Therefore, he said, it is important to produce a sustainable community effort. This concept, which he proposed for the VDG, is even more interesting in the context of KDE's community.

There have been challenges, Lake said. One of the biggest was the fear that grouping together people who have no skills—but where everyone has a say—will lead to a design by committee scenario, where there is no unifying vision for the project. He disagrees, adding that, for him, "it must be possible to have multiple people of various skill levels produce something meaningful." It is possible for a group to create a high quality design, he feels, because more people means more ideas and more creativity. Individual brilliance is great, but a mix of ideas could be even better, "if we know how to do it."

He then reminded the audience that similar things have been said about the development of free and open-source software. The VDG has learned a lot from the success of open-source developers, he said, and is confident that it will be able to figure out a way to make design work as well. The process is not chaotic and is very similar to open-source software development: talented people usually emerge and earn influence. People come to the forums with few skills, and are actively encouraged; according to Lake, "several great designs emerged that way." Once a community forms around an idea, other people start commenting, and the designers with influence and experience can also participate, helping to develop the proposal. He added that it is really important to limit the time allotted to produce a result, even though that is not standard practice in design work.

The other challenges for the VDG have been building a sustainable community and learning how to best interact with developers—especially knowing how to approach a developer in order to make sure there is a productive exchange. Lake admitted that they have had both positive and some "not-so-great interactions." To build its community, the VDG needs to focus on producing high-quality results over the long term and on providing an encouraging learning environment.

It does this by explicitly encouraging constructive feedback, setting examples, and stopping destructive behavior, as the entire premise depends on the community being constructive. Lake feels that they have done "a reasonable job" at this, adding that 90% of the time it is enough to just ignore destructive remarks; banning people and yelling are techniques that have not been used. Another, related effort of the VDG is to provide the appropriate tools for the community, such as forums and support for the KDE Human interface guidelines.

Current status

Lake then moved on to more practical aspects of the VDG's work. He explained that it is important to focus on the low-hanging fruit, and that it is paramount to respond whenever a developer asks for help. In his words, "it's great to shoot for the moon, but in this early stage, it's important to focus on short-term successes." He defined effectiveness in design as the product of correctness and commitment; if a developer is committed to working on the implementation, the designer must be willing to "take the 50%" solution now, knowing they can always improve the design later. According to Lake, it is also important to agree on what the deliverable of the VDG is: "it's not software, it's just the design."

Good interaction with developers is another important aspect for the VDG. Lake said that the best cooperation has occurred when developers came to the VDG and asked for help. Communication in the other case, where ideas pop out and the designers approach the developers, is "trickier, and some don't go so well". Lake said they are learning that "it's not great for an enthusiastic designer to storm into a developers office". The VDG is also creating the idea of a "resident designer," the design equivalent of a project maintainer, and is working on putting it into practice. As was mentioned in a later design talk, there is a resident designer working with KDE's Telepathy project now.

The community design process the VDG has created is working well, in Lake's opinion. In short, a candidate design is developed and a target cycle length set, then the group iterates on the design: incorporating feedback into the candidate and posting updates. Some of their results so far include new cursor themes, redesigned tool icons for Krita and various Plasmoid designs (such as keyboard layouts, a system monitor, and a dictionary); work is currently progressing on the Plasma Media Center. Lake admitted that not all of these results have emerged from community design—they did have some "lone genius" designers—but he hopes to move more toward open design over time.

Lake concluded by discussing the next steps for the VDG: capturing more use cases and requirements is needed, the designers should try harder to interact with developers, and they need to think of ways to provide consistent communication of design specifications to developers. The road ahead, he said, is to build a foundation: first to work on core design patterns, then move onto applications. More specific information, he said, is available in a recent blog post about VDG. He emphasized, though, that the order of items discussed in the post represents priority levels, and not necessarily sequencing.

Design was a recurring topic at Akademy: Lake's talk was followed by a presentation by Jens Reuterberg and Thomas Pfeiffer about improving collaboration between developers and designers, suggesting that interest in the subject is growing. Large developer gatherings like Akademy provide an excellent opportunity to discuss such "softer" topics. As evidenced by the talks and by the ongoing work of the VDG, the KDE community has evidently recognized the need for a larger focus on design as a component of KDE's success.