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This paper investigates the lack of designer inclusion in Open Source Software (OSS) and explores how to foster a more designer-inclusive environment. They employed speculative design, creating two contrasting future societies where designers are valued differently, to prompt reflection among OSS practitioners. A user study revealed that these speculative scenarios stimulated critical thinking about OSS values and challenges, leading to actionable recommendations for a more equitable and inclusive OSS environment.
Speculative design can effectively catalyze critical reflection and generate actionable insights for fostering designer inclusion within the often developer-centric world of Open Source Software.
Open source software (OSS) often prioritizes technical functionality over usability and UX design. This imbalance limits OSS adoption among broader, non-technical users. Key underlying factors contributing to this issue are the shortage of design expertise in OSS and a dominant developer-centric mindset. To address these persistent issues, we explore the potential of speculative design as a catalyst for transforming the OSS community's mindset towards a more designer-inclusive environment. Our design was informed by an analysis of online forums, which revealed designers'motivations and challenges when contributing to OSS. Guided by these insights, we created two speculative societies, Husia (collectivist) and Reetar (individualist), in which designers are valued for different reasons and their work incorporated in different ways. Through a user study with 12 OSS practitioners (seven designers and five developers), we found that our speculative societies provoked participants'rich and critical reflections on OSS values, the root causes of challenges, and proposed actions. Our work provides insights into how speculative design can be used in the practical, sociotechnical context of OSS to stimulate critical reflection, improve awareness, and yield recommendations for fostering an equitable, sustainable, and inclusive OSS environment.
