Challenges Designers Face in Open Source (And How to Fix Them)
Ubuntu, Friday, June 26th, 2026
Canonical surveys why designers rarely contribute to open source and how projects can welcome them.
Canonical's Design team surveyed 115 designers and open source maintainers to uncover barriers that keep designers from contributing to OSS projects.
The research identified four main obstacles: difficulty finding welcoming projects, lack of design-specific documentation and onboarding, steep learning curves with Git-based tools, and skepticism toward non-visual contributions like research and accessibility.
The article points to projects such as Bitcoin Design and Layer5 that use mentorship, structured guides, and transparent communication as successful models. It concludes that making open source more inclusive requires coordinated effort from both designers and maintainers.