Abstract

Open-source software projects have become prevalent in everyday applications, and it is imperative to continue supporting these projects while empowering the people behind them. The state of diversity and inclusion efforts within the leadership of open-source communities is of utmost importance and helps shape effective strategies for positive change. The purpose of this research is to gain insight into the challenges, experiences, and perspectives of individuals involved in open-source community leadership. Using participatory design methodology, this research explores what framework and design characteristics will help to develop a tool for the selection of open-source community leaders. In a pilot study, four people were recruited to participate in a participatory design activity to inform the selection and design of a tool to support informed decision-making by voting bodies associated with open-source communities. The results show that the Gender and Skillset was found to be the most useful to open-source community members when learning more about candidates running for open-source boards. The discussion describes how these types of features can be integrated into tools used by these communities to make selections and how tools such as this one could be extended to other use cases.