I want to design better OSS

Good design is as little design as possible
Less, but better – because it concentrates on the essential aspects, and the products are not burdened with non-essentials.
Back to purity, back to simplicity
.”
Dieter Rams
: ten principles for good design.

I’ve recently had the opportunity to design some OSS user interfaces (UI) again. Our customer had laid out their preferred UI design for a customised module. To put it bluntly, the plans weren’t viable but I based the revised designs as closely to theirs as possible. What a mistake!

When walking through the layouts with a number of colleagues they highlighted a number of fantastic simplifications as they were unconstrained by trying to mimic the designs provided by the customer.

It showed the need to try multiple variants and get multiple perspectives, as highlighted in this recent post.

Thanks to Paul for providing the link to Dieter Rams’ site above. l am always a willing student of better OSS designs, so if like Paul you know of any great design advice, I’d love to hear it.

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