What is Mozilla Open Design's Value Proposition?

[r_Up2mI1KfXvmSMPkEfhC6eg]

A recent conversation on the Reps Telegram channel inspired me to go and look for the Mozilla Open Design value proposition.

As I was not able to find it in a way that fit any of my mental models, I used Alex Osterwalder’s Business Model Canvas to better understand Mozilla’s Open Design.

Please have a look at the outcome below. I quickly reviewed it with @helios. Feel free to remix it, fix it and extend it. We would be thrilled to hear your comments.

Mozilla Open Design Business Model Canvas (snapshot)

Mozilla Open Design Business Model Canvas (source file)

https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1SRtx5zCysFwVl3kQRq3cYQa52NhbkuEZD0rt7fsrSJY/edit

Best regards,
@hmitsch

[george (GeorgeRoter)]

Great to see this here.

My quick comment relates to an opportunity I see to extend Open Design:

Another customer segment and value-proposition is related to experience and portfolio building of early-career and student design professionals. Basically, we could provide meaningful and real-world design briefs for people to work on.

I think this would require us to move this project beyond simply MoCo branding as a customer (for example, product and research teams, website teams, etc), have targeted outreach to potential contributors (they are unlikely to just find us), and possibly add structure to the process (e.g. have a structured partnership with a design school/class that meets coursework requirements).

My own view is that this type of thing would considerably extend the value proposition of Open Design, and would exciting!

[elioqoshi]

Thank you Henrik, as I said, it translates well a good part of our vision which we had for Open Design. Without going into details, I’d gladly use your way of describing it to newcomers, as it’s pretty well explained.

I think this would require us to move this project beyond simply MoCo branding as a customer (for example, product and research teams, website teams, etc), have targeted outreach to potential contributors (they are unlikely to just find us), and possibly add structure to the process (e.g. have a structured partnership with a design school/class that meets coursework requirements).

Love this. I need to make this more distinct, but the idea behind the Open Design repo is that all materials should be CC-BY-SA licensed for external use, so everyone can benefit from the work done at Mozilla Open Design, whether a Mozillian or not. This would help innovation and design thinking in other open source projects as well. I think we should communicate this vision and make it more clear. However Mozilla is big and moving things might take a while, but I’d happily accept help on this

[mbranson (Megan Branson)]

@r_Up2mI1KfXvmSMPkEfhC6eg @helios nice work, this is great to see!

Some thoughts in response to @george’s comments…

I think this would require us to move this project beyond simply MoCo branding as a customer (for example, product and research teams, website teams, etc), have targeted outreach to potential contributors (they are unlikely to just find us)…

I spoke to Rina about this last week: engaging designers of various skill sets to contribute to Mozilla communities, especially Open Design. Ideally we could empower these users to learn tools like GitHub and help them realize that contributing to Mozilla is about more than code. If we can engage communities that are more visual design and research focused, + help them connect with those that are technically focused, our outcomes can only benefit.

(e.g. have a structured partnership with a design school/class that meets coursework requirements).

This is a fantastic way to introduce less ‘technical’ design students to the world of Mozilla. Mozilla, despite it’s extremely open nature, can seem very daunting and code/development driven. Reaching out to designers when they are most impressionable and willing to incorporate different practices is extremely valuable.