[theforum] Design by community

[Jack Timmons]

On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 6:01 AM, adrinux <adrinux at gmail.com> wrote:

> A bit of Friday pondering...
>
> Just read Leisa Reichelt's blog "design by committee vs design by
> community (things we learned from the Drupal.org project)"[1] about
> the approach taken to the drupal.org redesign.
>
> There's an attitude around evolt that any design/redesign or evolt
> should be carried out by privately by a small group away from public
> view because 'design by committee sucks' -  very true. Also that users
> of the site shouldn't have to be involved in the running of it, leave
> that to enthusiastic volunteers...
>
> But it seems design by community is not the same as design by
> committee. After reading Leisa's article I wonder whether evolt.org
> wouldn't actually benefit from wider community involvement. Maybe it's
> a bit early to say, drupal.org has yet launched it's redesign. Maybe
> the evolt community is now too small for this to work well.<http://evolt.teamworkpm.net/>
>

I don't think it's a mentality of "only a select few should do it". I just
think it's more "only a select few have the time to commit doing a
redesign."

Ultimately, it's going to come down to a few people doing the footwork and
getting feedback from the rest. Is that bad? Hardly at all. That allows
people like me (who have an over-abundance of both projects and mundane
things to do in a day) to sit down for their allotted five minutes of
answering job-related emails and giving whatever change they have in their
drawer at the time.

Then again, I'm just a lurker who helps whenever said five minutes allow me.

-- 
-Jack Timmons
http://www.trotlc.com
Twitter: @jorachim