Get Involved/design
About the VDG
The VDG started out as the Visual Design Group, but has grown into a team dedicated to the whole user experience, including what is often called human interface design. The aim is to help KDE create software that is both beautiful and a pleasure to use.
VDG is always looking for people with skills in art, visual design, and human-computer interaction--or even just an interest in elegant design! If you have good ideas about how software should look and behave, you are a designer too, and we'd love you to join in.
Current projects
VDG's current projects are listed on the Phabricator workboard.
Communication and workflow
First, subscribe to the visual-design mailing list to hear about general news and updates.
Most VDG discussions start out informally, in the #kde-vdg freenode IRC channel (which is bridged to the VDG Telegram room, if you prefer Telegram).
Once there's general agreement in the real-time chat, the discussion moves to a Phabricator task. To be apprised of these, become a watcher for the VDG project in Phabricator. It's important that VDG Phabricator tasks task include as subscribers all the developers who may be affected by the proposed work. If there's a pre-existing task for the work, use that. If the discussion is proposing new work and there is no pre-existing Phabricator task, create one. Try to honestly and fairly summarize the discussion and initial VDG conclusion when writing the task's initial description. It's important not to lose context or history!
In the Phabricator task, it's common for the details or scope to change based on developer feedback. This is normal! Developers have a better idea of what's technically possible or reasonable to change. Listen to developer feedback and change the design accordingly, where necessary. At the same time, encourage them to listen to your expertise, and gently stand your ground if a developer tries to dictate design decisions to you.
Know thyself
In a highly technical field like programming, it's easy to know the limits of your expertise. This is more difficult in more subjective fields like art and design, and it's very important to have a firm grasp of your own limitations. If you know you're not very artistically skilled, don't involve yourself heavily in icon design work, for example. If you don't have any skill or background in human/computer interaction, leave those discussions to the pros!
