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Project terminology & external knowledge gathering
Introduction here
Another finding that was uncovered with regards to the perception of design, was that of the terminology used in the project, the knowledge of the developers and to discover what references and inspirations that were used when creating said terminology or understanding. Firstly it must be said that a general tendency among the developers were that they had a relatively strong understanding of design and mentioned concepts such as usability, accessibility and user experience as a natural part of the conversation. For instance, one developer said that “(…) usability, I’d say it’s about how easy something is to use for the first time. Ideally, it should make sense and be presented in a logical way.” (Interview #1, Jellyfin). The same developer also accounted his views on the difference between user interface (UI), user experience (UX) and the aforementioned usability which he explained by saying “(…) UI for me would be how a screen looks visually. UX would be the different paths the user can take in that screen (and into it or out of it). Usability would be how easy the screen is to understand”. Some of the other developers were not as articulate in discerning the subtle differences between these design concepts however, touched on key concepts in how they related in their work. Regarding usability one developer said that he uses his gut feeling to assess a design and that he knows that “(…) “If it’s too complicated for me, I know most people will not be able to follow it. I’m a pretty technical user.” (Interview #2, Jellyfin). Others had even “(…) read some more general pieces on user experience and user interface design” (Interview #4, Jellyfin) to inform their decision making process. In summary, it seems that while the terminology is not agreed upon it is rather advanced for a group of people not working much with it in their daily jobs. In addition, it would also seem that the more specific and comprehensive answers in relation to design came from the developers working mostly in, and with the development of the Jellyfin clients. This also seems logical given that the clients have a larger degree of design work.
In relation to uncovering what external knowledge there might be used in these projects, several of the developers noted that they do use best-practise minded design guidelines such as google-material design or the android guidelines, or even human interaction guidelines from other FLOSS projects, for example the Gnome project. (Interview #8, #6, #7, Jellyfin). From these mentions of using various guidelines for informing design decisions it can also be seen that there is no clear consensus from a project point of view on terminology, and that any and all terms or concepts derived from these guidelines are only used on an individual user basis. This means that currently these guidelines and concepts such as UX, UI, and accessibility to mention a few might be used differently in each silo of code, or between each contributor. In a similar fashion the goals of Jellyfin itself is also up to interpretation with regards to design, which especially is true given the lack of any real major design overhauls as of yet (as mentioned in the resource and project management section).