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Tell HN: We’re looking for OSS projects that need UI Design help

53 points by fairpx ↗ HN
I run a UI design studio that works with tech startups, but occasionally helps OSS projects out. We currentlu have a spot open to help out an open source project with their UI design for the coming month. Feel free to post your project or contact us directly.

Check out http://fairpixels.pro for work and contact details. (or my bio for an email address)

37 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 46.3 ms ] thread
ThatGeoGuy
Not my project, but I know that the guys at https://riot.im would love any help or feedback they might be able to get on UI/UX. I use the project daily on several different devices so I'm happy to give them a shout here.
DanielBMarkham
You guys just doing UI mockups, or could you create a UI that represents a simple transaction? (For instance, using REST, get a list of things. Person picks one. Using REST call something else. End of functionality)
emilsedgh
KDE.

Seriously. KDE has a good UI team but the number of projects and applications is huge and all the designers are volunteers.

There's Plasma Desktop and Plasma Mobile and a ton of applications.

And the visibility that your work will get by helping out there is more than most projects.

dabockster
Compared with other OSS, the KDE designs are amazing. But still, that's not saying a lot when compared with more professional projects that gain more press.
Animats
- Git's default graphical user interface, "git gui". It's awful. There's no sense of what's important and what's safe. It's just the git command line hammered into a Tk-type interface.
chmike
Excellent suggestion and high visibility, but probably not a small task.
ianai
I think that could be a somewhat smaller task. Developers will have direct domain knowledge and the core features are fleshed out.
jordigh
Making alternative git interfaces is its own cottage industry. Magit is my favourite, for those rare instances in which I have to use git (almost never now).
dabockster
cough cough

https://www.libreoffice.org/

Something1234
What's so bad about libreoffice? It's no worse than ms office, actually it's better because there are no stupid ribbons.
KGIII
LibreOffice added the ribbon earlier this year. It's optional and not the default.

Also, I understand most users like the ribbon in MS Office. Most vocal people appear not to, but I recall an article about a survey and most ranged from indifferent to positive.

dabockster
You're right about the ribbons, but toolbars on top of toolbars isn't really any better.
SammyWakan
The KeePass project (https://keepass.info/) would be a good one to contribute to. Their website and the actual app itself could use some modernization.
ythn
This one is possible, but might be difficult. It's currently a single developer who approves all code additions with no version control to sync things up.

i.e. You have to manually maintain your own fork of the codebase

SammyWakan
That's a shame if it's true. It's a project that could make a huge difference to people - both technical and non-technical.

I thought they were hosted on SourceForge and thus take patches but it's not clear from their website what the process is for contributing (proof that the website could use updating).

ythn
They are hosted on SourceForge, and you can access all the code, but basically anytime there is an update you have to download the newest version from SourceForge and reconcile with your private fork manually.
dv_dt
KeepassX.org then? (Completely different project team & codebase IIRC)
SammyWakan
KeepassX isn't active anymore. KeepassXC is the new active fork.
O1111OOO
It's a shame that the offer comes now because it's still too early... but the Purism Librem 5 phone[0]. It's just getting off the ground and this is an effort that really needs to succeed (more broadly).

[0] https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/

fairpx
We actually do this on an almost monthly basis, so who knows :) We would LOVE to work on this particular project. Is there anyone you know we can contact specifically for a more tight collaboration? Find my email in my bio
ZenoArrow
Good suggestion, and I wouldn't say it comes too early, making the default PureOS apps mobile-friendly is work that can start now:

https://pureos.net/

zelon88
My home-hosted Cloud platform is in dire need of UI attention...

https://github.com/zelon88/HRCloud2

I am admittedly more of a logical, back-end programmer. Any help, advice, or direction would be greatly appreciated.

ianai
Do you use it yourself? Like how mature is it.
zelon88
I do use it myself. The project was started in July of 2016 and was added to Github in August of 2016. I've been adding to it several times per week on average ever since.

I try to come up with ways to accomplish anything I would want a 3rd party service for from my home servers.

The API's are set and shouldn't be changing anytime soon. The overall structure of the application is set, but the current UI is modular and easily replaced. Now I'm mostly working on feature additions and fixing bugs.

ianai
Oh man make a decent *BSD installer/configuration manager. I know there are current attempts at this but they all need help. I think FreeBSD would especially benefit from some direct improvement.