How to be UX Researcher supporting an open source project with differing user objectives?
I've seen other questions about user testing or contributing UI to open source projects- I'm curious if anyone has done UX Research for open source tools. I'd like to get better embedded in their github processes and help them engage with community beyond the biased group of devs building the thing.
A few pieces of context:
- I am a FTE on a team that is partnering with an open source project- so the company employs FTE engineers and PM on the open source tool but there is also a big community of developers. As a researcher, I've been deterred from engaging in the ways I would on a normal team, mainly because the open source contribution process is so distributed and doesnt allow for roadmapping/UXR engagement.
- I did an original set of heuristics evaluation and "missing essential features" workshops with the team, but was told to put a pin in the work until we hired a PM (which happened recently).
- At its core, i feel the open source team believes we should be focusing more on the expert user (aka them) rather than the beginner, no code user (which is the company's objective), so i find my feedback and strategy to be at odds with them.
Any resources would be greatly appreciated!