Improving the usability of pip, the Python package manager
- Track: Open Source Design devroom
- Room: D.design
- Day: Saturday
- Start: 15:30
- End: 15:50
During 2020 I spent the year working with the maintainers of pip, the Python package manager. The project was to implement a new dependency resolver and improve pip's usability. It was a difficult project as I knew very little about software package managers apart from doing "pip install". How do you do UX design with a piece of software used by hundreds of thousands (possibly millions!) of users on a small budget? Where do you find those users? Combined with this the maintainers were under pressure to do a lot of complicated work in a short period of time.
This session will be a recorded discussion between the UX designers (1, possibly 2), and the 1 (possibly 2) pip maintainers. We'll talk about what it was like to spend a year working together, the challenges, the highlights (hopefully there were some!), and the lessons we can teach others. We'll leave 5 minutes (approx) at the end for Q&A.