I definitely get it! Github is not the friendliest place for non-developers like us and it can be a little intimidating getting started.
That’s why I filmed a short video tutorial explaining How to Use GitHub for Community Design!
Please watch, let me know what you think, and ask any questions here!
I applaud the effort to teach people how to use git(hub), it is a great tool. However, it is far from ideal in regards to use for design assets, and its usability for non-programming issues.
Is there any alternative place where people can upload and discuss designs when they are not comfortable with github?
Hey d_jan totally agree. I think that, for now, GitHub is the best place for proving out this “marketplace” model since it’s easy to implement and manage and is familiar to many.
However I agree ultimately we need to find tools that are non-programming friendly, open source, and integrated with the rest of our infrastructure (like Mozillians). Luckily their is a group in Mozilla right now called the Participation Software Lab that is looking at things exactly like this!
Another option in the immediate is to try and build a front-end for GitHub that makes it more accessible.
Thanks lharris for posting the video. Good to know that there’s a group looking into the tools/software question!
To help that group, it would be useful to collect feedback from designers about what makes Github challenging for them (or not). What Github features (or lack thereof) makes it difficult to deal with design assets? What are the usability issues that impact non-programmers? That way, the group has specific data to inform their recos and choices.
Making a note of this. Definitely the type of thing I’d like us to explore in ParSol (the participation software lab).
I do wonder, do we know what tools the MoCo Creative team uses to manage and collaborate on assets? Maybe we can derive inspiration, piggy back, or get our own instance or whatever of whatever they’ve got going on.
On opensourcedesign.net I wrote a brief article about some problems of using git and other programming orientied tools for design.