FAD DesignTeam 2016

This is the main page for the 2016 Design Team FAD, which is a FAD (a mini-conference) focused on recruiting (and enabling the recruitment of) new designers to Fedora via the Fedora Badges and Fedora Hubs projects.

• Location: Red Hat's Westford Office at 314 Littleton Road, Westford Massachusetts USA and Creation Station, a makerspace at 1 Park Drive, Unit 9, Westford, MA
• Dates: (tentative) July 28 - July 30, 2016 or July 29 - July 31, 2016

Purpose

The biggest challenge for Fedora's design team, as we presented to the Fedora Council in November 2015, is the recruitment of more and new designers to our community. Linux and generally open source communities tend to attract highly-technical developers and engineering staff a lot more than creative folks such as UX and graphic designers, yet to move forward towards many of our project-wide goals we need folks with these skillsets.

We would like to achieve our goal of both recruiting and enabling further recruitment of new design talent to the Fedora project (and FLOSS community in general) via the Fedora Badges and Fedora Hubs projects.

Primary Goals

1. Hold a one-day Badges hackfest at the Westford makerspace.
   • The makerspace is called Creation Station.
   • Community Outreach: We have offered to bring Fedora Design team members to Creation Station and provide free Inkscape classes to makerspace members as well as the wider local community. As part of the lessons, we'll create Fedora Badges artwork.
   • Onboard New Fedora Contributors: As a follow up to our Inkscape classes, we'll help participants make their very first open source contribution by onboarding them into the Fedora account system and helping them submit their badge artwork into the badges ticket system.
2. Have a 1.5 - 2 day Fedora Hubs design hackfest.
   • Engage New Contributors: We we will invite newcomers met at the badge hackfest to the Hubs hackest as well.
   • Hubs Usability Testing: We are planning to have some preliminary running prototype code (or, at least least, high-fidelity mockups) of the design team hubs page design available that we can run usability tests on with the newcomers met at the badges hackfest.
   • Hubs Design Brainstorming: Mo will run some design thinking sessions to gather design issues / feature ideas for the hub design.
   • Hubs Design Hacking: We'll work on improving the mockups / html+css of the hub based on our usability test and brainstorm session findings.

Secondary Goals

In addition, we will attempt to complete the following secondary goals as time allows:

1. Work towards clearing out the Fedora Badges artwork queue, including triage of new badge requests. (As of March 9, there are 13 triaged badges in need of artwork and 74 new badge requests that need triage and artwork.) We'd like to have artwork completed for at least the 13 triaged badges.
2. Help with any last-minute design issues for Flock, which occurs the following week.

Q & A

1. Why Badges?
   • As we've already discussed with the Fedora Council, badge artwork tends to be very well-scoped and easy for beginners to pick up, making badge design an ideal first contribution for new contributors.
2. Why Hubs?
   • Fedora Hubs is an important project for onboarding new Fedora Contributors, and is critical for two Fedora objectives - building open source software communities and developing the science and practice of building communities. We're looking to engage a more diverse talent pool to further open source, and focusing on an underrepresented discipline within FLOSS/Fedora and making sure the investment we're putting into Hubs will give us returns in reaching those folks is a good one.
   • Add your question here and we're happy to answer.

Impact

The completion of these goals will create the following positive change within the project:

• More design contributors to Fedora.
• Connection to a new external community with similar interests (Creation Station makerspace.)
• Usability testing for Fedora Hubs' design.
• Improved design for Fedora Hubs.
• More Fedora Badges completed.
• A potential model for how more diverse contributors could successfully be recruited into the project.

These outcomes connect with the following Fedora Community Objectives as follows:

• University Involvement Initiative: position the Fedora Design Team to be better able to take on and mentor new recruits from UX/HCI/design university programs.
• Fedora Modularization (Prototype Phase): recruit more design talent to help identify / plan for UX concerns around modularization and provide design expertise in clearly communicating proposals around this project as well as communicating decisions made to the broader Fedora contributor/user communities.
• Building open source software communities: this is the key objective of this particular event, but for the specific goal of building a broader and stronger community around the practice of design in our open source community.
• Developing the science and practice of building communities: we'll be taking on outreach activities with a local makerspace in the design space, which we have never before done as a project. We'll have plenty of lessons learned we can apply to future engagements.
• Creating a Free (as in Freedom) distribution: Fedora Hubs is going to vastly improve our ability to collaborate in building Fedora the distribution, and this event will further Fedora Hubs' design and development.

Detailed Work Items & Final Attendees

Attendees

Fedora's design team is unfortunately very widely geographically dispersed, which accounts for the larger-than-usual travel budget.

Name	Remote?	Day 1	Day 2	Day 3	Core Tasks	Confirmed avail?
Máirín Duffy		X	X	X	Planning, Hubs session leader	Y
Sirko Kemter		X	X	X	Planning, Inkscape class	Y
Ryan Lerch		X	X	X	Inkscape class, hubs design	Y
Marie Nordin		X	X	X	Badges leader	N
Maria Leonova		X	X	X	Badges design	Y
Chris Roberts		X	X	X	Development support	Y
Summer UX Intern		X	X	X	Hubs session	Y

Planning Prerequisites

• Work out preliminary budget
• Decide on dates and location
• Reach out to makerspace to gauge interest
• Reach out to ryanlerch / riecatnor for availability / interest
• Book Red Hat Office facilities
• Book makerspace facility
• Book lodging
• Help arrange for Maria's visa
• Write up usability testing plan for Hubs
• Formalize Inkscape/Badge workshop curriculum
• Publicize public makerspace event
• Arrange refreshments
• Arrange a social event

Plan

1. Location: Red Hat's Westford Office at 314 Littleton Road, Westford Massachusetts USA and Creation Station, a makerspace at 1 Park Drive, Unit 9, Westford, MA
2. Date: (tentative) July 28 - July 30, 2016 or July 29 - July 31, 2016
3. Schedule
   • Participants arrive day 0 / day 1.
   • Day 1: Badges Hackfest at Creation Station
   • Day 2: Hubs Hackfest at Red Hat Westford
   • Day 3: Hubs Hackfest (continued) at Red Hat Westford
   • Participants leave on Day 3 / Day 4.
4. Important skills (one or more)
   • design
   • UX
   • graphic design / Inkscape
5. Other considerations
   • We may need to rent a van for airport pickup/dropoff. This cost $350 last year.

Logistics

Snacks/Beverages: Will pick up from Market Basket and have available at Red Hat Westford on Day 2 and Day 3.

Lunch: Ideas... Rangoli Grill, Panera catering (Free delivery), Subway delivery, Chipotle (pickup). All options roughly $12/person.

Dinner: Same as lunch options except for social night, we can go to Bamboo.

Budget

Note that our budget is a little skewed because we have two APAC participants who are crucial to the team who are also attending Flock. Since they will have 3-pronged trips instead of two 2-pronged trips, it makes the budget a bit weird. We're splitting Ryan's cost 50/50 with the Fedora Engineering budget for his trip; for gnokii we thought it would make sense to fund his whole trip with the FAD budget. We've proposed some alternative funding arrangements below as well.

Name	Travel plan	Ticket cost	Total Budget (hotel + transport)
Máirín Duffy	N/A	N/A	$0
Sirko Kemter	PNH=>BOS=>KRK=>PNH	$860+$530+$722	$2270 (*)
Ryan Lerch	BNE=>BOS=KRK=>PNH	$994+$530+$892 / 2	$1358 (**)
Marie Nordin	ROC<=>BOS	$235	$393
Maria Leonova	PRG<=>BOS	$30+$710	$898
Chris Roberts	RDU<=>BOS	$236	$393
Summer UX Intern	N/A	N/A	$0

(*) - Includes Flock travel budget as well sans Flock hotel. Were we to pay for him roundtrip BOS<=>PNH + lodging, the cost would be $1400.

(**)- Assumes 50/50 split with Fedora Engineering budget to include Flock stopover. (Discussed and okay'ed with Paul Frields, Fedora Eng manager.)

1. Travel: $4881 (includes $350 for rental van for airport shuttling) for airfare, bus, train, etc. funding needed to get attendees to the FAD
2. Housing: 3 nights / 6 people $1035 (incl. tax) for hotel, etc. needed to have attendees sleep during the FAD
   • Westford Regency
3. Space: $0 for renting space to hack in, if applicable
   • Westford Regency can provide free shuttle service to/from hotel to spaces
   • Meals: $310 for lunch + snacks ($12/meal est. per each of 8 people + $22 of snacks), $200 for 2 nights of less fancy dinners, $150 for 1 social dinner
4. Supplies: $0 for anything else you may need

TOTAL BUDGET: ~$6576

Full budget options:

Plan	Plan Cost to FAD	Total FAD Budget
FAD budget covers all gnokii travel	$2112	$6576
Flock budget covers gnokii BOS=>KRK=>PNH	$860	$5324
Flock budget covers gnokii BOS=>KRK	$1582	$6046
FAD covers gnokii PNH<=>KRK (no Flock)	$1400	$5864