“Being a designer in an open source project is not easy. For
many years, usability specialists were disregarded, under
appreciated, and ignored. This attitude probably sounds familiar to
many of you because it was not too long ago that professional
usability specialists encountered the same resistance.“Over time, developers in the open source community became more
knowledgeable about usability and design due to good case studies,
developer-designer education, and increased exposure through
industry software practices. It took several years before many open
source projects embraced usability as part of the development
process and not as an afterthought…”