#The power of community - A practical guide to community-driven UX

It is no secret, that successful products or software projects must have a good UX. This does not mean that it needs to have a pretty GUI - or even any GUI. UX isn’t the same as UI, UX is nothing more or less than the subjective perception of a product a user has before, during and after interacting with it. While UI often plays a role, UX includes much more - from ease of use and efficiency to how well a product meets user needs.
At the center of UX is always the user. Without them, it is practically impossible to achieve a great UX. With code contributions, involving users was always integral part of open source projects. So why stop there? Community-driven UX means integrating and collaborating with the community in every stage of development. This goes beyond traditional user research: it’s about fostering an ongoing dialog between users and maintainers, where feedback loops drive continuous improvement. It builds on openness, trust, and the willingness to adapt based on real-world usage and needs. Instead of designing and developing in isolation the feedback of the community helps to improve workflows, prioritize features, and enhances usability.

##Methods for gathering and utilizing community feedback
	*Survey: Fast, easy, and broad input but requires careful interpretation.
	*User Interview: In-depth insights but need diverse participants and more effort
	*Usability Testing: Uncovers real-world pain points 
	*Bug Bash: Find many bugs and improvement opportunities in a short amount of time
	*Community discussion & informal feedback: Valuable and reduces blind spots, but often unstructured and can get out of hand quickly

##Lessons from Checkmk’s UX Work on the example of “Notification”
	*Not everything is as it seems: Uncovering the underlying problem
	*Digging deep: User interviews to understand use cases and challenges
	*Putting insights into context: Running a survey to understand and identify patterns
	*Creating a benchmark: Finding out common mistakes and measure current usability
	*Testing the hypothesis: First usability testing on a prototype created in Figma
	*Iterating & testing: Running two more usability tests rounds and iterating in between
	*Answering open question: Running another survey to answer questions popping up during development


##Best Practices – Dos and Don'ts
Do: Engage regularly, be transparent, and adapt methods to the community.
Don’t: Rely solely on surveys, take everything at face-value, overcomplicate feedback processes, or ignore qualitative insights