Tools

Here you can find a list of tools and resources that were either recommended by projects during their funding period or mentioned during coaching sessions and calls. The list is in no way complete - feel free to send your tips to the program managers and we will add them to the list!

This list exists only in English as it doesn't make sense to translate a list ;)

Design/UI

See also: Tipps von geförderten Projekten, Users&Communication

Collaborative tools

• UI-Design and Drawing
  • Penpot is a FOSS-alternative for Figma, a UI design tool
• Whiteboard
  • Excalidraw is a FOSS-alternative for Miro
  • tldraw is a FOSS-alternative for Miro

Color

• Color palette tools:
  • https://coolors.co/palettes/popular
  • https://www.colourlovers.com
  • https://htmlcolorcodes.com
• Color Systems:
  • material design color system
• Checking contrast for accessibility:
  • https://contrast-grid.eightshapes.com/

Fonts

• on type design (podcast)
• Finding fonts
  • velvetyne.fr "researching and disseminating typography and typeface creation."
  • Font squirrel has a useful Open Font License filter option

Icons

• Finding icons
  • thenounproject.com

Logo design

• A good example about how to write down your requirements: https://antennapod.org/it/blog/2020/06/getting-to-a-new-icon
• A worked example for a logo creation process: https://www.fordes.de/posts/logodesign_softwareproject.html

Prototyping

• Paper prototyping, a way to try ideas with users without needing to write any code. See paper prototyping on Wikipedia and an introductionary article on alistapart.

Accessibility

• Notes from human rights centred design call
• Accessibility Lab
• Average adult reading level
• Average adult reading level, 2. Link
• W3C tips for getting started
• id24 is a great conf on accessibility
• Axe-con, another good a11y conference (watch talks online)

Redesign & Vorbereitungen für die Arbeit mit Designer*innen

• Design project scoping
• Impact goals
• Audience

Privacy-preserving measurements

• Clean insights

Design Consolidation & Templates

• Organising files and design systems on Figma
• A big team of OSS designers working on a single OSS tool
• Community resource for designing/organising on Figma
• A talk from the Open Source Design track at FOSDEM 2022
• A list of design systems

Recruiting

• Finding a designer: Open Source Design Jobboard: https://opensourcedesign.net/jobs/

Read & learn about Design/UI

• "Intuitive" is often the same as "Familiar" – "how to make something can be used as something that is familiar to users" can usually be answered more productively than "how to make this intuitive"
• The book "Don’t make me think" (Steve Krug) is an excellent, short introduction.
• Icons are often harder to understand than lables
• Heuristic Evaluation: Using rules to spot usability problems in a usage scenario; ideally done by several people.
  • 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design the most common set of rules
  • How to conduct a heuristic evaluation
• Web form design:
  • 10 rules for designing forms
  • Filling in the blanks (book): https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/web-form-design/
  • Forms that Work: Designing Web Forms for Usability (book): https://www.amazon.de/dp/1558607102/

Usability tests

In a usability test, potential users try to use an early version of your product to find potential problems that you need to fix.

• The book "Rocket surgery made easy" (Steve Krug) describes usability testing (and recruiting for- and communication of it)
• In general, it is better to do several smaller usability tests than a one or two big ones. Even small numbers of users can help to find problems. A classic article on this is "Why you only need to test with 5 users"
• You do not need an almost finished product to test (the earlier the better, actually): You can evaluate a single feature (see tracer bullet development), a mockup (see penpot or figma) or a paper prototype.
• The System Usability Scale (SUS) provides a “quick and dirty”, reliable tool for measuring the usability.

User research & journeys

• Visualize user activities over time with user journey mapping
• Possible interview questions (1 page)
• A Beginner’s Guide to Finding User Needs (~100 pages).

Project management and planning

See also: Tipps von geförderten Projekten →Managing teams and projects, →Managing time

• User Story Mapping is useful to plan which features to work on first. It can be useful alone, but it is particularly helpful for working in teams. There is also a book: User Story Mapping by Jeff Patton, 2014.

Tools

• Wekan, Taiga and Kanboard are open source project management tools based on the idea of having virtual cards or sticky notes. If you already use an issue tracker or git hosting, a similar feature might be already implemented there.

Writing Code

• Tracer Bullet Development is a method to get a working version of your software quickly. This allows to evaluate code architecture and user interface early. The method is described on this website, and more in-depth in the books "The Pragmatic Programmer" and "Ship it".
• The Pragmatic Programmer (Thomas/Hunt, 2020) is a good general introduction to professional software development: Keeping code readable and easy-to-change, learning requirements, utilizing unit- and property tests, basics of securing applications. There is also a German translation.
• Refactoring Guru has a lot of resources on common ways (patterns) of how to approach particular problems and how to improve existing code to make it easier to read and to change (refactoring).

Markdown & co

• Markdown table generator
• Pandoc converts various formats (like markdown, HTML, LaTex, docx,…) into each other. Great to build simple tool chains around documents.

Funding & Sustainability

• Sustain has various podcasts on sustainability in open source software, i.a. open source design, documentation or climate.
• amcasari has a guide to creating a sponsorship prospectus in order to attract and retain sponsors.
• Circulab offers the Circular Canvas, a business model canvas. There is also a business model canvas by CASE.

List of funding opportunities apart from Prototype Fund

• Crowdsupply is an open source platform for fundraising for hardware.
• Numun Fund is a fund for feminist tech infrastructure in the Global South.
• Open Collective is an open finances platform for communities.
• OSS.Fund offers an overview on monetization platforms for open source creators.
• Seedrs is a crowdinvesting funding platform (not open source).