Join us for a Branding Jam!

The CredSperiment Research
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I’m Eric, visual design lead at @protocol. Hi! We’re throwing a design workshop, and we need your brain.

SourceCred Design Jam

An open workshop to distill themes, brainstorm metaphors, and discuss SourceCred design with the community. Insights and ideas from the session will inform ongoing SourceCred branding and logo development.

Deets

We’ll use Mural to collaborate, and meet in this Zoom room at 3pm UTC on 20 May. Add to your calendar

Spoiler Alert! Some Prompts We’ll Use

Please think about these in advance, in order to make our time more productive. Thanks :slight_smile: …

  • Words that say "SourceCred"

    • What is SC like? Adjectives
    • What feelings does it stir up in users? Emotions
    • What does SC stand for? Values

  • Analogies: In addition to the following, what “real world” services and situations might be interesting analogues to SourceCred?

    • Amazon collects user reviews and ratings
    • A home inspector examines a house and issues a report
    • Someone cleans the dishes, and another notices and appreciates them

  • Metaphors: Similarly, what objects and actions seem to fit SourceCred? E.g. …

    • Tape measure
    • Dr. taking a patient’s vitals
    • Magnifying glass

Hope to see you there, thanks! Eric

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Looking forward to it!

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A big thanks to those who were able to join! Our next step will be to assemble two or three mood-board collages for discussion, each representing a different general graphic direction. We’ll meet to select one, and then advance to logo sketches. Watch this space

Watch the video of today’s workshop

Join the conversation by adding to the Mural board

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SourceCred design jam notes

Audiences

Creators

Researchers, filmmakers, artistic communities, academics (citation networks), archives such as Dublin Core, deep-thinking people, those with an analytical mindset, who are altruistic to some extent

Maintainers — Primary group

Open-source maintainers, community managers, “altruist anarchists,” crypto project maintainers, DAO sensory organs, people who think open source should get paid, and humans not machines!

Contributors — Second most important

Under-appreciated non-technical contributors, those who’ve read Sacred Economies, crypto anarchists

Explorers

Researchers, DAO sensory organs, potential beneficiaries of open-source projects

Sliders

Tone

  • Algorithmic / Human: Spread out. False dichotomy? Maybe the solution weds these extremes (and the two below)
  • Organic / Engineered: Toward organic, but spread out. False dichotomy?
  • Mass appeal / Exclusive: Toward mass
  • Exciting / Banal: Toward exciting
  • Active / Passive: Toward active
  • Nuanced / Binary: Toward nuanced, but spread out
  • Friendly / Authoritative: Friendly with one Authoritative outlier
  • Conventional / Hip: Even
  • Serious / Fun: Even
  • Loud / Understated: Even

Graphical direction (group’s initial thoughts, to gauge predispositions)

  • Abstract / Representational: Toward abstract
  • Familiar / Revolutionary: Toward familiar
  • Nuanced / Obvious: Toward nuanced
  • Illustrative / Typographic: Toward illustrative, with one typographic outlier
  • Gridded / Fluid: Slightly toward fluid
  • Flat / Dimensional: Slightly toward flat
  • Intricate / Austere: Very slight intricate bias
  • Chunky / Fine lined: Even (slight spread)
  • Vivid / Muted: Even
  • Write-in candidate for a logo with an animatable design element, showing state / personal involvement

Real-world Analogues

  • Amazon collects product user reviews and star ratings
  • Home inspector examines a house and issues a report
  • Someone cleans the dishes, and another notices and appreciates them
  • Get paid to browse with Brave Browser (something you do anyway that brings you benefit)
  • #didathing (add a hashtag when you post to report a contribution you made)
  • Earning a medal
  • “Employee of the Month”
  • Volunteer awards or recognition
  • 360 reviews
  • Jira reports → Management bonus decisions
  • Computer Games Scores Assignment
  • Minority Report heads up display
  • Small town, everyone knows everyone
  • Word of mouth (when you’re looking for a service)
  • China’s social credit system (dark authoritarian pattern)
  • Ethical OS (beware of “ForceCred”)
  • Mozilla badges (old pg)
  • Movie credits
  • Research citations
  • humans.txt
  • Read the glossary of a history book to find how many times and in which places (pages) a specific person was named.

From shared links

SourceCred and the Quest to Outcompete Capitalism

  • Our rewards system is off kilter: amazing teachers are paid far less than mediocre investment bankers, eg

  • Capitalism is the worst system, except for all the others

  • It’s good at

    • Creating incentives
    • Feedback
    • Investing in what gets results

  • But

    • Everything is transactional
    • Which skews perceived values
    • Public good is under valued
    • Tries to wedge non-transactional domains into transactional forms
    • With bad consequences

  • An improved system might

    • Recognize the value in non-transactional things (People)
    • Retain accountability
    • Be difficult to game
    • Flow cred rather than a value exchange

  • Open-source products are better when more people are involved

  • Hypothetical example

    • Math teacher gets cred based on the work her students subsequently do

Maintainers User Stories Discussion

  • Key need: balancing/coordinating Maintainers & Contributors