What If We Work Together? Fostering Reflections on Designer Inclusion in Open Source Software Through Speculative Design

A new study from McGill University researchers Rozhan Hozhabri Nezhad, Jin L.C. Guo, and Jinghui Cheng tackles a persistent problem in open source software (OSS): the lack of designer inclusion and UX focus. The paper, accepted at ACM CSCW 2026, introduces speculative societies—Husia (collectivist) and Reetar (individualist)—as a thought experiment to provoke OSS practitioners into rethinking how design expertise could be valued and integrated. The researchers first analyzed online forums to identify designers' motivations and barriers when contributing to OSS, then built these fictional worlds where designers are incorporated differently based on societal values.

In a user study with 12 OSS practitioners (7 designers and 5 developers), participants engaged with these speculative societies and generated rich, critical reflections on OSS culture, root causes of design exclusion, and concrete actions for change. The work demonstrates how speculative design—typically used in HCI for future-thinking—can be applied to the practical, sociotechnical context of OSS to stimulate awareness and yield actionable recommendations for fostering a more equitable, sustainable, and inclusive environment that balances technical functionality with usability.