I’m a longtime ux design contributor for the Drupal project. I started out small and along the way my impact grew. I contribute because I want more people to be able to wrap their heads around a really powerful piece of software.

Besides growing your portfolio, it will also help grow your communication and people skills, because you’ll often rely on others to actually implement your proposed designs. You’ll learn about how to collaborate with front & back end developers, documentation specialists, translators…

You’ll start to appreciate how much work can go into actually getting something built. Which will teach you to prioritize and become more pragmatic and strategic in where you focus your efforts. Being able to make such considered trade-offs and able to communicate those to stakeholders is a very valuable skill.

David: check out http://openusability.org/ for an attempt at that. The #ouconnect hashtag for it hasn’t taken of yet.

Thanks for sharing Roy! I totally agree about the communication and people skills, as well as the prioritization skills. Valuable indeed.

So is there a speed dating site, where needy FOSS projects can find aspiring designers, and vice versa? That would be nifty. :)