design

Hello designer! We're excited to have your help envisioning changes or new features to Wordplay.

Here's the general flow of design work:

• Wordplay has an ever growing set of issues, many of which are feature requests tagged enhancement.
• A designer's job is to find enhancement ideas that do not yet have a concrete problem statement or design proposal, and create them, or decide that the problem can't be addressed. These issues should have a "needs design" tag, but not all of them will. (If you find one that doesn't, add the tag).
• One you've chosen an issue that you'd like to own, comment on it, and assign yourself. Be sure to note who else is assigned and coordinate with them on the issue. If you're not also acting as the issue's developer, you'll also want to find a developer to collaborate with.
• Find the other people who've contributed to it, or even the person who suggested it, and start doing research. What problem is it addressing? Should the problem scope be larger, smaller? Who's needs would it address? Capture all of this in the main body of the issue, and revise it as you learn, so there's clear documentation about the need.
• As you research need, you're going to generate concrete ideas. Your job is to envision concrete designs or redesigns that address the problem, and capture them in the GitHub issue's main body text, potentially with sketches. Do not link PDF. PDFs are not accessible to people who use screen readers without significant effort, and so anyone trying to read your design with a screen reader will not be able to.
• Next, you need design approval from the head of design, Amy. Iterate with her until you get her blessing, and then you can tag the issue as "ready to build", which signals to developers that its eligible for development. See if you can recruit someone to collaborate on it with.
• Your final job is to see the design through, to ensure that developers build what you envisioned, and not some frankenstein version of it. This should be a collaborative process, not something that you toss over to engineering; regular communication and testing is key. A successful design project will ship the feature, and end with a high five between designers and developers.

Need some guidance that's not here? Ask Amy and she'll write it.