Ideas on modernizing the open-source desktop

Scott Jenson, a former UX designer at Google and Apple, spoke at KDE's Akademy 2026 conference advocating for open-source projects to modernize desktop design beyond the traditional "windows, icons, menus, pointer" model and invest more in user experience. He emphasized that open-source lacks sufficient UX design resources and shared examples of thoughtful interface details, such as Mac's centered ellipses in truncated filenames, to illustrate how small design decisions significantly impact user experience. Jenson now works with open-source projects like Mastodon and Home Assistant to improve their UX design practices.