orta / opendesignkit

Open Design Kit is a living toolkit for designing with distributed collaborators.

About

Bocoup's Design team maintains Open Design Kit as an open source tool. It's design for collaborators who are not co-located, with a variety of skill levels. No prior design experience is required for you to try out these methods, just an open mind. The Kit includes activities from ideation to implementation and is meant to evolve with use. To share your feedback or add a method, open an issue or pull request on our Github repository.

Since 2009, Bocoup has been creating, championing, and continually improving open tools and workflows used around the world. We foster environments of inclusivity and individuality as we dedicate ourselves to solving global market challenges in the public sphere. We bring diverse experience and leadership to all of our projects so developers and users can accomplish more.

Key Documents

• Hypotheses Our beliefs about design that we are using the Open Design Kit to investigate
• Project Brief The Open Design Kit's purpose and requirements.

What's the big idea?

Design literacy needs to be constantly developed and improved throughout the software and product development industry. Designers must constantly level up their skillsets with lifelong learning. Engineers often need to learn how to collaborate and incorporate new practices into their workflow to successfully support the integration of design. Clients and stakeholders are repeatedly challenged by the fact that design is a verb, not a noun that is handed off, but a verb that needs constant attention. To address this, Bocoup is openly compiling a suite of learning materials, methods, and systems to help our staff, clients, colleagues, and community better understand how we design and when to roll up their sleeves and get in on the action. It is our hope that this exploration will be useful for other companies and individuals to incorporate into their practice.

So, why does the world need another compilation of tools? Here’s why:

• To establish what it means to design in the open, with practical methods designed for distributed collaborators.
• To provide a framework for design thinking and conversations within open source development.
• To collect practical ways to interleave design and development in an open and transparent way that works for diverse stakeholders.
• To share open educational resources to support design literacy

How to get involved

Please see the contributing doc for more information. If you are adding a new method:

• Step 1: Submit an issue identifying the method that you would like to include.
• Step 2: Go to the "wiki" folder in this repo - and find the "Method-Guide-Template.md" file - and open it.
• Step 3: Copy the template from the markdown file. (This can be done by clicking the Edit 📝 and selecting all of the text and then "copying"it. Once this is done, close the markdown file - and make sure not to save any changes).
• Step 4: Now go back to the wiki folder and select the "Create new file" button. Now in the Edit file section, paste all of the text. Be sure to name the file with your method. It should look like: opendesignkit/wiki/[methodname].md
• Step 5: Write your method. Please keep in mind the design values and the primary goal of our kit being for distributed teams.
• Step 6: Create a pull request. This can be done by scrolling to the bottom of the page where it says "commit new file". You should name the commit by including the method in the title. Then write a brief extended description. Finally, select the radio button titled "Create a new branch for this commit and start a pull request. Learn more about pull requests." Then select the "Commit new file" button.
• Step 7: Fill out the github issue for the pull request. If you know another contributor on the project, this would be a good place to mention them as well as the issue that you wrote about the method in Step 1
• Step 8: Now you are done with your submission. Stay alert! Someone who reviews your method, might suggest some changes before it's approved.

An alternative method for the more technically inclined, is to push these edits to the wiki use the docs.sh bash script. Run: sh docs.sh

How to Use the Kit

There is no set order of operations for getting started with the kit. The idea is that once you find yourself in a jam, you can reference the kit to identify tools and practices to support you in getting from problem identification to solution, check out all the methods.

The kit also helps to bridge the gap between the work of design and the work of implementing a design, there are ideas and thoughts about how to do that and hopefully help the process go smoothly. Design kits are not generic. What works for one community/company might not suit another. If the methods in here don't resonate with you that's totally ok, and better yet - submit ones that do!

Accessible design, by and for everyone

While these practices have been road tested for open source projects, they can be used by anyone, anywhere on any project. If that isn’t the case, go ahead a remix them! Design should be accessible and responsive to the unique needs of specific inquiries, problems and abilities.

Check out the wiki to see what methods are available.

Inspiration

This exploration was inspired by many individuals and organizations. A few projects that do a great job at identifying design tools and practices are Ideo's HCD Design Kit, 18F's Methods and Gov.uk Design Principles. The goal of this kit is not to replace these resources, but to live beside them.

Contributors

Many creative individuals have contributed in some form to the project - including:

• Jess Klein
• Susan Robertson
• Sue Lockhart
• Pam Drouin
• Isaac Durazo
• Irene Ros
• Yannick Assogba
• Jim Vallandingham
• Lorin Bond
• Brian Brennan
• Boaz Sender
• Mat 'Wilto' Marquis
• Ricardo Vazquez
• Doug Belshaw
• Atul Varma
• Michael Champlin