While these look great, I do wonder if these sorts of templates are the right "level" of asset to work with.
Most of these templates include a fairly developed information hierarchy, but for most applications the information hierarchy is the backbone of the UX and very tightly guided by the features of the application. By building too much of an information hierarchy do these sorts of templates over-fit to imaginary use-cases in a way that makes them useless for real world use?
Perhaps this is less of an issue than I think, if users just pick and choose the bits, and use these less as a template and more of a design-system a bit like Bootstrap, but then are they losing the value that these provide? Alternatively maybe users are re-organising their applications to fit these templates and maybe that's ok if the information hierarchies are very well designed here, but I'm not sure that's a skillset that has been applied in creating these.
Edit: looking through the Figma files, these are definitely not design systems, they're specific screens, and not very many of them. I can see these being useful as inspiration, but unsure how they could be used in an actual product.
> By building too much of an information hierarchy do these sorts of templates over-fit to imaginary use-cases in a way that makes them useless for real world use?
If I'm understanding this right, it's a template shop that gives away the Figma designs as a promo? That's nice, but calling it "open" is a bit of a stretch.
The assets are downloadable, open source in that you have access to the raw design asset, and are usable without attribution or payment. What about this is not open?
I believe they are referring to the fact that the 'coded' (HTML/CSS) version of the design is paid, and it is only the graphics and layout (i.e. "Figma" design) that is free.
https://openby.design/codedtemplates.html
For sure, I get that. It seems like that implementation (HTML/CSS) is separate from the design here, which is totally cool. The designs are open-source and openly licensed, but the implementation is not. That seems fair given their business.
The website mentions how the design world is closed off and they wanted to open this to do something about that. The attitude of "the implementation should also be open-source" seems like it reduces their efforts on the design side.
It's not explicitly labeled as CC on the license page, but maybe it's still considered CC due to the wording: https://openby.design/license.html
An asset is typically the final rendering of something, not the source that was used to develop that asset (image of design on Dribbble vs the Figma / Sketch files used to produce it). It's common for renderings to be made available online—although usually not explicitly licensed—but I more rarely see source made available.
In my mind, calling something "open" means that everything on offer is open. Anyone is free to do whatever they want, of course, but I wouldn't call freeware (software) "open" even though it's free to use without payment.
you are free to do whatever you want with the downloadable source files. Every design is completely open. From the dashboards, to the logos and upcoming other categories.
Most of these templates include a fairly developed information hierarchy, but for most applications the information hierarchy is the backbone of the UX and very tightly guided by the features of the application. By building too much of an information hierarchy do these sorts of templates over-fit to imaginary use-cases in a way that makes them useless for real world use?
Perhaps this is less of an issue than I think, if users just pick and choose the bits, and use these less as a template and more of a design-system a bit like Bootstrap, but then are they losing the value that these provide? Alternatively maybe users are re-organising their applications to fit these templates and maybe that's ok if the information hierarchies are very well designed here, but I'm not sure that's a skillset that has been applied in creating these.
Edit: looking through the Figma files, these are definitely not design systems, they're specific screens, and not very many of them. I can see these being useful as inspiration, but unsure how they could be used in an actual product.
Yes.
They are not really generic components that can be used in different use cases that the designer didn't think of.
But, they are a good source of inspiration though...
The assets are downloadable, open source in that you have access to the raw design asset, and are usable without attribution or payment. What about this is not open?
The website mentions how the design world is closed off and they wanted to open this to do something about that. The attitude of "the implementation should also be open-source" seems like it reduces their efforts on the design side.
An asset is typically the final rendering of something, not the source that was used to develop that asset (image of design on Dribbble vs the Figma / Sketch files used to produce it). It's common for renderings to be made available online—although usually not explicitly licensed—but I more rarely see source made available.
I've used these quite a bit over the years.