One of the most common complaints about open source software is bad UX. This can mean a lot of things to a lot of people (and modern design isn't always great either) but generally, a lot of it seems to be designed for and by technical people who don't mind configuring, menu-diving and reading the manual. Open source projects also tend to not invest their (admittedly often limited) resources on UX and UX designers.

OpenProject is an open-project management and collaboration tool that's been around for over ten years. The software went through its many versions and iterations without a dedicated design team and did so without this necessarily being a problem. But in August 2021 OpenProject GmbH hired not one but two UX designers to improve usability and user experience. I'm one of them.

In this talk, we will look at:

• Why OpenProject decided to invest in UX
• The challenges of designing for (and around) a tool with lots of legacy code, architecture and design
• How we're (slowly but surely) implementing a design system
• How we balance a seemingly endless list of UX optimisations with new feature development
• What we've learnt in the past year and a half
• How we plan to go forward in 2023