Open need as solution strategy

"Open need",  the conceptual/strategy is under-developed strategy and vision to guide FLOS development and break the monopoly in market for any software solution. Biggest realization of this project need is that FLOS softwares are the free and open solutions for mostly closed needs. The need or requirement of the software are closed, undisclosed by the proprietary developers but more importantly unexpressed by the people who need them, the users. When users have the ability to express their needs and when those needs in form of standards or use-cases are available to all as "Open need", the development of solutions will be well guided and will happen at multi points both proprietary and FLOSS community. This should reduce monopoly if not at-least guide the FLOSS development. To sum it, "Open source solution follows open need expression". The inspiration of this concept was realized while attending a software presentation inside the institute meant to help designers to identify similar looking trademarks. A huge gap about the software need between users/designers and the software developers and a need for bridge communication to express the need in form of use-cases from where the developers can take off was understood. This holds good for any software. The design methodology of designing along with the customers called Co-design needs to be applied to software development too. When this gets executed for FLOSS development there will be tremendous achievement for software freedom. Doodles related to this strategy are below:

Graphic designers explaining basics of graphic design to a developers

and Me acting as the bridge between NID and OSI, Open Source Intiative

Review feedback expressed in the "E-verification software for similar looking logos." 

Logo expression of NID becoming Open source development hub

Open need logo derivation from open source initiative logo

Open need expression in form of use-cases and available in commons.

Possible content for publication design

The personal motive of the project as a graphic design student is to enhance necessary graphic design skills.
Publication design is something which is difficult to learn outside the institute. The solution set which has publication design element will be executed for the essential experience of publication design. The major issue with publication design is to grab a ready and simple content else the content generation itself can consume the project weeks. An analysis of suitable content was done as shown in the below image.

Problems, scenarios, solutions, strategies

The problems related to floss for designers was broken into different scenarios.

a) Miscommunication or no communication about FLOS softwares to designers

b) Designers facing challenges while consuming FLOS softwares

c) Designers not participating in the development of FLOS softwares meant for them.

d) Designers not participating in the development of FLOS softwares meant for all ( Non designers ).

All these problems are analyzed for their root causes. Few major root causes are poor usability of FLOS softwares because of :

a) Developers having less motivation to develop softwares for non-personal use.

b) Developers having lesser clarity about the software requirement and depending on proprietary software features.

While searching for solutions the answer was found in the problem itself in most of the cases.

a) Better the development of immature FLOS softwares by designers participation in FLOS software development as customer, co-designer.

b) Promote and adopt the successful FLOSS and their philosophies.

Below captures all of this

Reviews online about FLOSS for graphic design

Gimp, Inkscape, Scribus are FLOS softwares designed for graphic designers. Gimp is an alternative for photoshop; Inkscape for illustrator; Scribus for Indesign. Their merits and demerits are captured in the below visual.

A photography student's experience

One of the photography student was amazed by SCRIBUS, an free and open source software for (Desktop)publishing. He was amazed that a software available for free can do so much. He needed to document his final project so he was using scribus but he had to switch to indesign because of few issues like color reproduction. But his biggest question was "Why would someone write software and give it away free ?"  I explained him what I had doodled. Click for the doodle

FLOSS usability issues for designers and its root cause

FLOSS developed for designers have lot of issues.

I could recognize:

a) Lesser features

b) No interoperability(photoshop file can be open illustrator file can be open in indesign and in other ways too)

c) Lesser reliability(crashes frequently)

d) Alien interface

e) (APPEND HERE latter)

While trying to understand why this is happening, I stumbled upon these nice articles :

a) http://mpt.net.nz/archive/2008/08/01/free-software-usability

Above link explains the problems and how to address the FOSS usability issues.

b) http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viw/2313/2065

Above link is an comparative case study of two governmental OSS initiatives. One of the prime motive is to cut cost for IT infrastructure in government bodies with a prime theme of “we pay only once” for s/w license among the government bodies.

(TO BE READ)

The presentation

After data collection and study, three major scenarios emerged along with their benefits and challenges.

They are :

Designers as non-users of FLOSS.

Designers as users of FLOSS.

Designers are contributors to FLOSS.

The below link takes you to the PPT presentation which describes the above with a brief introduction to the subject of the project, "FLOSS for designers".

Click for presenation

Data presentation metaphor

These are the parts of the sheet presenting metaphorically the data collected. The metaphor is a real landscape with well guarded castle for proprietary software space, a back door pirates and a free forest community landscape for open source community. Left placement of FLOSS landscape is intentional to suggest the COPYLEFT stand while COPYRIGHT/proprietary community in the right and creative commons in between them as a router.

Data synthesis

These are sheets where the collected data is categorized. This activity should have been done using flexible “post-it”. The mistake should not be repeated in future projects.

Doodle : Creative commons

Another interesting offspring of Free soft licensing is creative common licensing. Very nice visual interventions like creating visual symbols and visual dominated summary of license text are executed. Even the website is very easy to consume. Create commons is interesting concept to encourage people to contribute to commons and decide their stand from copyleft to copyright.

Why would anyone write free software ?

Why anyone would write free software was one interesting question which lot of us are curious about ? And here is a doodle to explain it. courtesy: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/fs-motives.html

Open source and NID night mess

A excellent analogy of open source software is the night mess at NID hostel. The kitchen is open to access, open to change, open to share. And open source doesn’t mean free of cost and so is the kitchen.

Data collected

The data collection ended. The notes are displayed in the form of “Open source initiative” logo. It was very interesting phase. One can get lost in the data collection. Hence the constant remainder to centre around the main theme of project, “FLOSS for designers”.

“You, designers can spend lot of time to understand the content but remember someone is spending his life on the content. You can never become expert and that is not the motive.” - Roughly the words uttered by Immanuel Suresh

Data collection : NGO in a box

Tactical technology, an international NGO had brilliantly designed a solution for NGO across the world. They are providing the essential Free/Libre and Open source softwares (FLOSS) to NGOs in a kit. Few FLOSS are not matured enough to be used in professional works but are very handy for amateur works. Well conceived, executed project.

http://www.tacticaltech.org/

Free software philosophy

When we say free software,

"FREE AS IN FREEDOM, NOT AS IN FREE CHAI"

Data digestion over night mess chai

Me, the collected data and chai at the night mess.

Data collection : Hackers

The roots of FSF leads to hacker community. This word was again abused to mean illegal privacy breachers. Actually hackers definition goes like “A person who delights in having an intimate understanding of the internal workings of a system, computers and computer networks in particular.” This emblem of hackers was designed by Eric S. Raymond and is a representation of a glider formation in Conway’s Game of Life.

Data collection : Free software foundation

Where else but fsf.org, the free software foundation portal, the authentic data bank about free software movement. Portal talks about the free software movement’s philosophies, how open source differs, different campaigns, licenses and resources. The crux of common misunderstanding was “FREE IS NOT ABOUT PRICE BUT ABOUT FREEDOM”.

The categorized data

The categorized data. The section misconceptions and questions clearly necessitated the next step of data validation and collection from authentic sources. The some of the major categories which came out are : software life cycle, software editions, software companies, proprietary softwares, philosophies, software problems, piracy, misunderstandings, free softwares, questions, free software and open source issues.

Brainstorming : Categorized data

Brainstormed data was categorized and transfered to a new sheet. The image shows the categorization in process.

Brainstorming categorization using s/w

Now the brainstorming sheet contents need to be categorized. An attempt was made with the brainstorming software called XMind’ “GRATIS” version but decided against proceeding further. This is because of a) difficulty to reproduce doodles and drawings as a brainstorm content b) difficulty in exporting image output files.

Initial communication need

Creating awareness about free software and open source software among design students in NID.

Before writing proposal for this self-initiated project, I wanted to validate my assumptions that design students in NID aren’t much exposed to free softwares and open source softwares. Hence short interviews and brainstorming happened which were recorded in a sheet. These recordings will be categorized and developed upon later. The image below is the brainstorm record sheet.