On January 31 and February 1 the 15th edition of the FOSDEM event will be held in Brussels, Belgium. FOSDEM (Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting) is the largest gathering of open source community members in Europe. More than 5000 people will come from all parts of the world to meet, share ideas and collaborate.

As the name says, the event is highly developer centric, so the main focus has always been on the technology and the code. But open source software has graphical user interfaces too! Buttons to click, sliders to drag, forms to fill out, boxes to check, screens to swipe and what have you.

Useful software attracts users. To keep them around and attract more users, the useful has to be made usable. Which means uncovering and prioritising user goals and needs and doing the work to find out how to best serve those. That’s where design comes in.

This year FOSDEM will have it’s first ever “devroom” dedicated to the topic of open source design. User experience architects, interaction designers, information architects, usability specialists and designer/coder unicorns will share experiences and discuss the good and bad of design in open source environments.

Open source software is a driving force behind all things online. As more aspects of business, culture, society, humanity as a whole move into the digital domain it becomes just as more important to ensure that people don’t get left behind because of the sheer complexity of it all. There’s a lot that the craft of design can contribute to ensure this.

I’ll deliver a short talk about how we started, grew and maintain a user experience design team within the Drupal project. Otherwise, the schedule is looking great. I’m looking forward to meet my open source designer colleagues.

See you there?

Tags: designfosdemdrupalplanetSub title: Lets make better things.