From: https://www.kooslooijesteijn.net/blog/why-is-free-open-source-software-badly-designed
With software it’s clear: when you don’t have programmers, you don’t get a computer program. But when a team is employed to develop a product without designers, a design gets made nonetheless. Accidental design. Bad design, most likely. But with no designer around and no one listening to users, the client is not going to notice.
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Great design isn’t done by picking up a tiny issue and creating a solution for it. It’s done by gaining deep understanding for the problems people have, the context in which they use products and by testing solutions with people. It’s labor-intensive and requires people who are engaged with their users over long periods of time.
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In volunteer-to-volunteer situation, they just have to hope someone feels like doing it. If the frontend developer is like, ‘Yeah, but I like it the other way’, designers are shit out of luck.