New "Weirder-Looking" Effect Interfaces vs. Classic

[sin night]

One word: usability.

If a product gives me “bad usability vibes” at first glance, I’ll ignore it without even checking it out. It’s not worth my time

And if everybody raves about it and it’s just too good to ignore, I’ll curse everytime I have to use it and I’ll end up using it less than I would like otherwise.


As a customer, if I’m looking for a tool, I want to get a tool; if I want to buy someone’s artistic expression, I’ll buy a piece of art. Rarely a work of art serves as a tool as well (I can’t think of any example).
I don’t mind if a tool is decorated, I like it when things are aesthetically pleasing, but they have to serve their purpose first and foremost.

[CandelaAudio]

Out of curiosity, are there any plugins you guys feel nailed that balance between clarity, workflow efficiency, and personality and style in the UI?

[sandandpaint]

Out of curiosity, are there any plugins you guys feel nailed that balance between clarity, workflow efficiency, and personality and style in the UI?

Freakshow Backmask - but it does not really have a difficult or unique interaction. There are buttons and dials and if you want they are labelled

Looking at the video on your site I think you put individual items into the soup one by one . That would become annoying fairly quickly but if you pushed them off of their shelf and into the soup you basically have a slider and that would be fine for increasing a value. But how do I then reduce the number for potatoes for example. Could still use the slider idea just potatoes would jump out of the soup and onto the shelf when reducing their value

[CandelaAudio]

Out of curiosity, are there any plugins you guys feel nailed that balance between clarity, workflow efficiency, and personality and style in the UI?

Freakshow Backmask - but it does not really have a difficult or unique interaction. There are buttons and dials and if you want they are labelled

Looking at the video on your site I think you put individual items into the soup one by one . That would become annoying fairly quickly but if you pushed them off of their shelf and into the soup you basically have a slider and that would be fine for increasing a value. But how do I then reduce the number for potatoes for example. Could still use the slider idea just potatoes would jump out of the soup and onto the shelf when reducing their value

I'm afraid I don't quite understand your analogy. In our case we have a chain strip with 'slot cards' for hosted plugins. That can expand up to 8 slots (with a slider). Underneath it is the monitoring and analysis section. Is that what you are referring to?

In any case I am still to see a plugin host solution anywhere which feels really intuitive and looking great, without getting quickly rather complex when loading multiple slots, with multiple params per slot ...

[kritikon]

Same as pretty well everyone else here - I want usability over silly. If I can't understand what the controls are,what they do (or even on the silliest ones) where the controls are, then I won't use it. A daft parameter called "orgasmatronity" on a googly eye or a cartoon etc, I'm not even going to demo it, never mind buy it. I just don't have enough time or will to learn stuff I shouldn't need to learn - like where the f**k is the wet/dry knob, oh I missed it because it's a bright pink albatross in the bottom left hand corner. It's infantile too. My first impression is it's made for kids so it can't really be any good. Once you give me (and others) that first impression, it's incredibly hard to shift and it sticks.

It doesn't have to be classic knobs and look like hw. Some of the flat GUIs e.g. Korg Opsix, I quite like. Garish ones like some earlier Fabfilter ones - meh, not easy on the eye and give me a headache. Won't get used. BUt it has to make sense and tell me what parameters are being controlled. Some kind of organised layout with section for grouped features. THere's a good reason why most synths follow a theme - filters, envs, LFOs, oscillators - if they're randomly splashed about the GUI it just doesn't work.

Having said that, every now and then a daft GUI works. Someone menbtioned Delay Lama - I loved that and diddled around with it a lot - BUT if I'm honest it was to play with the cartoon and make silly noises because it made me laugh, not actually as a useful tool. Me and the missus would light a spliff and giggle to the Lama - is that what you really want as a designer of serious sw that's used for music?

[sin night]

By the way, Delay Lama had the controls placed on the bottom of the GUI, under the animated monk, if I recall correctly. It was quite usable.
The animation was the main thing, of course.

[swilow11]

Not a fan of stuff like Freakshow Industries. Its too much to deal with, often hard to know what's happening and the GUI makes me no want to spend time learning it.

Otoh something like Unfiltered Audio Silo has many parameters and options that arent all that clear despite being relatively simple to look at and operate. On that note, and while this isn't something about Silo, the unnecessary use of virtual patch cables doesn't always really work for me. For a virtual modular environment like the grid or reaktor, it's fine. For something like UA Byome or Specops, it's not really useful. It just clutters the place up. I do like this look in Tal Mod though which has abundant modulation potential which would probably get complicated by use of a mod matrix.

The only fancy looking thing I actually like is Lunacy Audio Beam. It looks good and generally makes pretty good sense quickly.

[Monsieur_FyP]

It’s not just a matter of usability and clarity. It’s also an aesthetic issue. Styles like “cartoon,” “video game,” “child's drawing,” “horror movie”, etc., aren't part of my world and don't speak to my imagination. I find them ugly, they annoy me, and I don't want to have to look at them for hours on end.

[osiris]

You mean like this

jack dark did some great plugins, guis aside, some creative stuff!

Dark was a master at this and no matter how weird his plugs looked I would always at least try them. He was ahead of his time with the glitch stuff.

[NAD]

Your Sound Soup plugin in my opinion looks very cool but scores pretty low on usability. Dragging the veggies into the pot brings to mind these intentionally silly volume controls.

[kernaudioio]

to CandelaAudio's question: the ones that nail the balance usually share a principle: the visual metaphor maps directly to the parameter. Fabfilter Pro-Q's nodes are draggable because bands are spatial. Valhalla's flat grids give you precise readback with none of the decorative weight. even Freakshow stuff works because the controls are still labelled and discoverable, the weirdness is aesthetic rather than structural.

the soup interface breaks the rule because ingredient quantity as a control doesn't tell you what audio parameter you're moving or how far. the mapping is hidden inside the metaphor. from a dev side: distinctive styling and workflow clarity aren't opposites, but you have to decide which comes first, and users mostly need it to be clarity.

[CapnLockheed]

I find cutsey, gamey GUI'S not only to be off-putting personally, but to my clients as well. A serious musician paying real money for real audio engineering is probably not going to want to to work with a producer/engineer who's tools look more like toys. Of course, that's just my opinion....YMMV.

[Zeisner]

Dragging the veggies into the pot brings to mind these intentionally silly volume controls.

Thanks for the laugh, I really needed that. Those examples are hilarious.

[Zeisner]

A serious musician paying real money for real audio engineering is probably not going to want to to work with a producer/engineer who's tools look more like toys.

Correct. And they wouldn't want to wait for the mixing engineer or producer to "cook" a sound first either. Anything that slows the process down results in higher costs.

[kritikon]

Your Sound Soup plugin in my opinion looks very cool but scores pretty low on usability. Dragging the veggies into the pot brings to mind these intentionally silly volume controls.

Some of those are just pure talent.