Comment by chestnut-tree | Hacker News Reader

Comment by chestnut-tree | Hacker News Reader

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"That's also why Ubuntu is so reviled in some Linux circles..."

I sometimes wonder if good visual and interaction design can succeed in the open source model. In software development, tasks can be parcelled out in a modular way to many developers. But this model doesn't work well for visual and interaction design. If you want all the parts of an Operating System or piece of software to feel consistent and cohesive, you need a more focused approach. And that means handing design tasks to a designated design team and entrusting them to make the UX decisions. But with open source projects, we all want a say in the UX (me included); thus the endless (and often bitter) discussions about how a piece of software should behave.

The model of open source code has influenced and inspired countless companies. But who can point to examples of visual and interaction design from open source software that has had a similar effect? I see the influence going much more the other way i.e. open source software often follows ideas or conventions from commercial companies. I'd love to see this change. But how?

In my opinion, parcelling out software development in a modular way doesn't work that great neither if you don't have guidelines, api definitions – community enforced styles of doing things.

I think, the same thing works with visual and interaction design. But you'd need a small group of people to make the basic UX decisions and write concise guidelines others can follow. Like Apples «Human Interface Guidelines»[0].

This isn't really purely democratic, but I think it's almost impossible to find the "one way of doing things" if everyone has their say in every micro decision.

For me its much more important to have consistent user experience than the details of it. Its like tab vs spaces in programming or semicolon vs no semicolon in Javascript. I have my personal preferences, but i'm fine with either one as long as it is consistent at least within the project.

[0] https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/Documentation/UserEx...

I would suggest it is democratic - there is and always has been a tension between our elected officials bein our representatives and our delegates.

The same goes for any democratically appointed UX team.

Yes your right. But i'm swiss, so a lot of countries dont really feel democratic to me:) Not enough power for the people – too much for those elected.

On the other hand, we, the people are soon to vote whether Switzerland should terminate european human rights contracts. It's insanely democratic and it scares the shit out of me because it might actually get a majority.

You can shoot yourself in the foot with too much democracy.

I thought the UK was the only one insane enough to think human rights were a pick and mix. I recommend Conor Gearty on why the Uk should not pull out (LSE podcasts on iTunes)

We're not directly voting against it. The referendum is carefully titled "Swiss law before foreign law" which would include the human right convention among every international law. The Advocates emotionally argue that the swiss should never be dictated by foreign judges, we can perfectly handle everything ourselves. Unfortunately a lot of people in Switzerland live on ivory towers, thinking their better than everybody else on the planet and agree with that statement.

The right wing fear machinery fed with millions of donation money has really poisoned the political climate over the last decade. Whether you agree with their points, a system like ours, where basically every citizen can trigger a nation wide vote about almost anything (e.g. reintroduction of death penalty) only works if the debates are driven by reason, not populism. The other parties recently jumped on the same train, saying it's the only way to defend against those scare mongers … sigh

I still love our system, it gives the people not only power but also a sense of responsibility. It's not the government that fucked things up – you did. But it doesn't make a country completely immune to dedicated actors with enough influence and money like many believe.

The modern marketing machine has indeed done a number on democracy. And with marketing being related to money, and money invariably congregating on the right, well...

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