GNOME Design: How to Contribute

Welcome to GNOME Design! GNOME design is a small, friendly group, and we have strong links with designers across Free Software. We are always looking for new contributors, and everyone is welcome.

Steps to get involved:

• Join us on the #gnome-design IRC channel on irc.gnome.org.
• Familiarise yourself with our design pages and mockups.

• Check out our recommended reading, particularly Havoc Pennington's essay on Free Software UI.

• Read the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines.

If you want to work on design tasks, introduce yourself on #gnome-design or contact us via email.

Learning Design

GNOME can be a great place to learn how to do design work, and you don't need to be an accomplished designer to get started. If you are new to design work, here is some general advice and tips:

• Learn how to do heuristic evaluation.

• Find out about usability fundamentals, such as Fitts's Law and grid systems.

• Read software design blogs, including the blogs of GNOME designers

• Learn the tools, and play around with some of our mockups.

Above all, resist the temptation to redesign whole applications or even the whole of GNOME 3. Instead, pick a small user interface (preferences windows are a good place to start) and work to make it better:

• Identify usability and design bugs by conducting heuristic evaluation.

• Research solutions to the problems you have found and discuss possible approaches with GNOME designers.
• Draw mockups of the redesigned user interface.

• Write up your findings on the wiki. The design whiteboards is a good place for you to put your work.