OPEN LETTER TO SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS

[zerocrossing]

I didn’t read the full rant, but yes, many UIs are a mess for all sorts of reasons. Most are bad because they let cleverness get in the way of clarity. This should never be. No one needs to see a picture of circuits when doing tweaks to a synth.

[Shabdahbriah]

Yeah well... and then:

Kantos by Antares.png

[nix808]

Yeah well... and then:

Kantos by Antares.png

That's almost my fav interface of all time heh
when u press kantos it does a ps ripple(how cool)

[fmr]

Yeah well... and then:

Kantos by Antares.png

That's almost my fav interface of all time heh
when u press kantos it does a ps ripple(how cool)

This proves my point that GUI preferences are a highly personal subject. Therefore, I agreee that all GUIs should be skinable as a rule.

[Scotty]

Exactly, although there are some fundamental principles for good design, taste is highly personal. Almost every thread on the topic generates divided responses. I do appreciate the OPs letter regardless. He articulated his point of view clearly and I am sure it resonates with others.

Yeah well... and then:

Kantos by Antares.png

That's almost my fav interface of all time heh
when u press kantos it does a ps ripple(how cool)

This proves my point that GUI preferences are a highly personal subject. Therefore, I agreee that all GUIs should be skinable as a rule.

[funky lime]

Skinable GUI is a double-edged sword. The devs can just half-ass the design, and let the end user roleplay as a (unpaid) graphic designer instead. Look at Reaper, for instance: literally hundreds of user themes available, and maybe 3 of them are halfway decent. And the parts that arguably need skinning the most, aren't skinable. And after spending a few days trying to roll my own theme, and ending up basically worse in every way, I realized that skinning just isn't for me.

I think bad UI can be alleviated to some extent by using midi hardware. For many of my frequently used plugins, at least in a live context, I'm not looking at the GUI anyway—it's all just hardware faders, encoders, pedals, rgb leds, etc. The computer mouse is still a necessary evil at this point, but ultimately it is not how we should be interacting with something so primal and organic as music, in my opinion.

So for me, the pinnacle of bad UI design is: not exposing enough (or the right) parameters for automation.

[chk071]

Exactly, although there are some fundamental principles for good design, taste is highly personal. Almost every thread on the topic generates divided responses.

There are some general guidelines and rules which work for 99% of the people though. And, many of these guidelines are simply ignored (or, rather, disregarded by people who know nothing about them) with some plugin GUI's. Which is a shame, because, a good and clear GUI definitely makes me want to use software, rather than chase me off.

[THE INTRANCER]

While I do not like for example default U-He HIVE2 colors, I got impressed few days ago seeing how the interface can be converted. To the point one could not even recognize it is still the same HIVE2 program. That is really nice, although it would be even nicer to have some tool to edit (kinda like Ableton does this through Max extension editor).

I'm too tired to respond to your post in full, which I'd normally do.(late nights working on Hive's GUI redesign catching up with me). But Hive does have an inbuilt editor but getting it to work isn't conventional, obvious, or fun in practice. Nor is it really fun to use, in my experience, it's more like a helping aid / complex box of tools a developer can access to help in the coding side of things.

In short:

1. Whether you use bitmap graphics or vector graphics, there are con's, and pro's, to each. You can use both.

2. Abeltons GUI is one I've never liked, it's simply too flat, cramped together, and generally ugly for my taste.

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GUI design and development isn't something you can pick up, simply by watching a few videos on it. If it was easy, almost everybody would be doing it. It takes a lot of time, commitment to keep going, and discipline to objectively self criticise your own work, so you can learn to make it better and form your own style, whilst recognising principal conventions.

[bmanic]

GUI or any kind of usability/presentation design has the same public perception as "production quality" in general. If you take 1000 random people, show them a bunch of movies and ask them to rate the "production quality", a probable majority will each rate the same "best" movies as the highest quality production wise. A few outliers will think the crappiest home movie made in the 80's on a camcorder will be the best looking because those people are or pretend to be quirky.

Same goes for music production "audio quality" and GUI "quality".

There is a general consensus of quality and if you want mainstream success it's well worth investing in a team that has knowledge of what constitutes this mainstream quality. Trends do move around and sometimes things are in fashion and sometimes out of fashion (for instance flat vs shaded).. but overall perception of quality has more similarities than not.

It's not just nostalgia or changing of trends that makes older operating systems look dated, there is actual science and advancement in color science and UI creation that has influenced how they operate and look. Heck, even the Linux crowd eventually embraced proper GUI setups.

So yes, while this truly is at the core a matter of subjectivity, it's also partly science and true advancements.

For usability, in my personal opinion, it's way less subjective.. almost 100% objective. You can directly measure if you have a better or worse solution for a function by simply counting the amount of mouse moves (the distance you need to travel with the mouse cursor) and clicks it takes to do a function. Simple as that. If your solution takes unnecessary moves and clicks, you are not doing the optimal UI usability. Another factor is ergonomics, taking the human body and the most common postures into regard. This is why moving a mouse up/down feels much easier than from side to side.. which is why nobody in their right mind forces users to move horizontal sliders or other elements side to side unless absolutely necessary (for instance XY pad). The industry standard has thus become up/down movement of the mouse for most knobs/slider elements, in all software. It sort of happened automatically because it's ergonomically the best option when using a mouse (which is the most common pointer hardware still).

[aklisiewicz]

"Which is probably why GUIs on pretty much every new plugin are scalable. IT is pretty much exclusively a problem with older plugins that were released before Apple f**ked everyone over with their ridiculous marketing bullshit. "

Unfortunately there is still tons of new plugins released to the market which are not scalable
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"My first question is how big are these monitors? If they are less than 32", then you are just asking for trouble. My second question is what is the point of a 4k monitor if you are just scaling everything to make it usable? I avoid any monitor I can't use with 100% scaling because you don't get any advantage from scaling, only problems. "

My monitors are 32" and I have to scale to 150%. The reason for 4K ? My PC is used for many other tasks )not only the music) and 4K gives me great benefit (especially crispier screen). I have zero issues with well designed software.
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"Rubbish. The problem is at least as bad with laptops. There are plenty of lappies with 4k screen options and any half-decent laptop these days is offering 2.5k on a 13.3" screen. It is increasingly difficult to find a good laptop with a proper full HD screen. "

Well, while I cannot answer this for Apple computers (do not like them and do not use them) I can say I tested several plugins and software on several laptops running Win10/11 and everything looks a bit better (still not as I would expect).
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"As a graphic artist with 26 years experience, I feel exactly the opposite. I think Live has an horrible GUI overall, although there are some aspects of it I quite like, whereas some of my absolute favourites are Kontakt instruments, like Output's Substance and Straylight."

Seems that you talking about beauty and that is and will always be a personal preference.
PLEASE NOTE - TIS POST IS NOT ABOUT A BEAUTIFUL INTERFACES BUT READABLE INTERFACES. In a sense of readability the number one factors are: 1)font color 2)font size 3)font backgrounds 4)eventually the underlying graphic.
I agree that some, Not even one Kontakt library meets the WELL DESIGNED INTERFACE criteria. Not because the Instrument interface is bed for all of them, but because KONTAKT does not allow customization of that interface.
Yes, some are better than others and I have found a few (very few) which are still readable, but most of them suck.
It is not Library or instrument fault. It is NATIVE INSTRUMENTS which is a light year behind with their software implementation and is responsible for others to implement crap which is unreadable (and remember this has nothing to do with beauty). Grey font on a dark rey font background will never look as readable as white font on a gray background, PERIOD.
If some users prefer grey ON gray it's OK, but for those who have less sophisticated hardware or eyes there has to be a CUSTOMIZATION. If there is no such a customization then no matter how good the plugin is in its functionality - IT IS A TRASH for most people.

Kontakt and KK interface is a perfect match for Window-95 but not for us living in 2023

Please note this is mostly a message for a developers OR users who would like to influence developers (UI designers) with the ideas on how to make their software sell better.

[THE INTRANCER]

I can read my Hive GUI from 30 feet way, on a 24" screen

[aklisiewicz]

My first question is how big are these monitors? If they are less than 32", then you are just asking for trouble. My second question is what is the point of a 4k monitor if you are just scaling everything to make it usable? I avoid any monitor I can't use with 100% scaling because you don't get any advantage from scaling, only problems.

that is incorrect. I use 3x4K monitors for few dozen of other programs. Some have issues some do not. Some programs can still be fied by Windows compatilility settings, but there are (even new programs) resistand to that.
I keep OS scaling at 150% and it works OK in most cases, although it requires some tweaking. The bottom line is that developers designing the screens should leave the design part to those who know how to build interface OR take some lessons how to do it.

MOAJRITY OD DEVELOPERS (I would say 90%) BUILD INTERFACES WHICH SUCK !

This is the intention of this post. Please share it with those who develop the software. Send the link to this post to your VST provider.

[zerocrossing]

Yeah well... and then:

Kantos by Antares.png

The 00s were a dark time. I just saw an old image of what Zebra 2 used to look like. Eeech.

[pekbro]

The scaling thing can be problematic, i just got my first 4k tv and actually have a couple
plugins that inrease in size by 25%, every time they are opened if monitor scaling is not set to 100%

*That said, having been a professional developer in the past, things like consistant
scaling across platforms and devices can be
surprisingly difficult. Particularly when you
are deriving the scale from the active device
interface.

[THE INTRANCER]

I'd like to see what the OP has design interface-wise, as he seems to have all the answers.