Open source geospatial is in an Enlightenment era regarding design; many teams are breaking away from tradition and embracing simple, clean, and usable interfaces. For a long time though, open source geospatial software, and geospatial software in general, seemed to pay little attention to the knowledge of the design community. Here, I will discuss why design has taken a backseat for such a long history and what is suddenly changing that brings it to the forefront. I will also talk some about the design decisions that have gone into the CartoDB user interface and many of the mapping options we help our users find. This talk will focus both on the history of design in open source geospatial software and where it is heading in the future. We will also talk about how design itself is inherently open and how we are working to improve open source software design through our own contributions and through this discussion of our process.
