Firstly, the question I think that needs asking is: “What’s the lowest barrier of entry, such that anyone with a good design idea can easily showcase it and get feedback from the greatest number of people?”

Second, I feel it’s important, as well, to take the focus off of coding, and place it on visuals and interaction flow. You expect a plummer to be able to give you running water and fix leaks, but you don’t expect them to be able to design a beautiful bathtub and faucet. Similarly, I think we shouldn’t expect programmers to necessarily be elequent at the art of good user interface design – though some certainly are.

The solution for these two issues is simple: Instead of coding, we should be *drawing* and sharing our drawings with each other, and getting comments and feedback on them. Using Gimp, or Inkscape, it’s quite easy to create a quick sketch of a new design concept. If you post a series of sketches, you can show how a user might interact with your design – as if it were an actual working prototype. If there were a Brainstorm-type website to showcase these drawings on, you could easily attract a large audience of Ubuntu users, who would provide plenty of feedback on how well that design might be received, and how it might be improved.

Drawings are also good because it’s a lot easier to scrap them and start from scratch than it seems to be with code. This “lack of attachment” to one’s ideas is great, because it invites greater experimentation.

I recently spoke to Ted Gould, of the Desktop Experience Team. He’s working towards creating design(dot)ubuntu(dot)com. Perhaps it will be similar to what I’m suggesting.

Just my $0.02

PS – this is essentially I repeat of what I just posted on jono bacon’s blog, under his article “The Gritty World Of User Interface Exploration”

boy, sure must be nice to have all that money.