Hi, I'm running a UX design mentorship to help aspiring UX designers build portfolios through doing free work on open source projects. Would OpenWRT be open to a pilot engagement with our designers to see if we can add value?
Our designers would be professionally mentored by a seasoned industry UX designer and would work with developers on this project to help plan, design and user test improvements to the LuCI interface.
Welcome to the community!
Since it your first post and you're soliciting people to do free work, you may want to add some professional information about yourself and the program.
Thank you. Sure, I’m a product design person with full stack engineering experience in the Seattle area. This program is not affiliated/endorsed with my current or past employers, but here’s my background.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradgashler
I have worked on open source projects like VS Code and Apache Cordova, and I get asked frequently for help from people trying to break into the design industry. Many for profit “schools” offer help, but from what I’ve discovered they often don’t help people get jobs because employers want to see “projects you actually shipped,” not spec work or certificates. My proposal is to test out my concept program “Open Product Design” for 2-3 months (designers would be part time volunteers) to see if having designers contribute to open source projects, like engineers historically have, can help them get a great job while adding value that makes it worth the time of the project collaborators and users.
I thought of this project specifically, because OpenWrt is something I love and use on multiple devices. I experienced a learning curve how set up some of its advanced features with sensible settings like VLANs and firewall and thought maybe there’s some design opportunities, if the team is open.