[LAD] Experience driven design and Linux Audio

[Joël Krähemann]

On tal, 2014-09-30 at 10:56 -0400, Paul Davis wrote:
> 
> 
> On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 9:58 AM, Harry van Haaren
> <harryhaaren at gmail.com> wrote:
>         Hi Linux Audio Developers,
>         
>         
>         TL;DR; Discussing experience driven design for linux audio.
>         
>         
>         I'd like to discuss the "age of experiences". Allow me 10
>         minutes of
>         your time, to watch a video by Aral Balkan talk about
>         development of
>         technology, FLOSS, design, and the future.
> 
> <las> HarryHaaren: interesting talk
> <las> HarryHaaren: i want to agree with him except for one major issue
> (for me)
> <las> HarryHaaren: i'm not interested in making "consumer tools"
> <HarryHaaren> las, I came across Aral's work recently, and its been
> very interesting for me anyway.
> <las> HarryHaaren: and if i'm not making consumer tools, then my model
> is not apple but tools for cabinetry
> <HarryHaaren> sure, valid point: I agree.
> <las> HarryHaaren: and everything he says would be total bullshit and
> totally inappropriate there
> <HarryHaaren> but I don't feel that's the case for the whole
> Linux-Audio eco-system
> <las> HarryHaaren: indeed
> <las> HarryHaaren: but basically, the bit that is missing is easily
> summarized: Live and plugins
> <las> HarryHaaren: these are where his "experience driven" stuff
> matters
> <las> HarryHaaren: and yes, i agree that it does matter
> <HarryHaaren> agreed: that happens to be just what i'm particularly
> interested in :D
> <las> HarryHaaren: he even uses the term "tools"
> <las> HarryHaaren: i think this is a serious abuse of the word, but
> he's not the one who started this
> <las> HarryHaaren: when my wife uses a computer, she really doesn't
> want tools, she wants his experience thing
> <las> HarryHaaren: tools are things people use to gain leverage over
> the world, so in some sense, it seems appropriate
> <HarryHaaren> I'd quite like some more of the experience thing - in
> the right places. And the power of "under-the-hood" available when/if
> required, agreed again
> <las> HarryHaaren: but they are also things that for centuries, people
> have expected to have to learn, to master
> <las> HarryHaaren: when i look at the design of iOS what i see is a
> huge effort to remove learning from the whole user experience
> <las> HarryHaaren: to make everything absolutely obvious (once you've
> learned a few basic ideas about the UI)
> <HarryHaaren> sure: not something i'm fond of for all situations: too
> much "generic" is bad in the arts / creative sectors IMO
> <las> HarryHaaren: when the *task* is simple, this seems appropriate
> <las> HarryHaaren: but when the *task* is not simple, i think its
> inappropriate
> <las> HarryHaaren: if you look at a table saw or a crosscut saw or a
> router, they fail almost every possible test of "user experience"
> <las> HarryHaaren: they are dangerous, loud and more or less
> completely opaque as far as how to use them to get a particular result
> <las> HarryHaaren: and yet ....
> <HarryHaaren> sure: but learn to use it and its no problem. I
> appreciate that, and i see how it applies to certain software too
> <las> HarryHaaren: yes, and the learning about the tool leads to
> learning about the task also
> <las> HarryHaaren: do you know how easy it would be to make a plugin
> called MakeItSoundBetter that just had 3 buttons?
> <las> HarryHaaren: "change it", "that was better", "that was worse"
> <las> HarryHaaren: people would love this "tool". and by using it,
> they would learn absolutely *nothing* about what they were doing
> <las> HarryHaaren: i don't want to help create that sort of world
> <las> HarryHaaren: on the other hand, i don't do much auto
> maintainance, so ... what does that say? :)
> <HarryHaaren> fair enough. I probably would. But let people click the
> "advanced" button, see the algorithms, and learn about the tool & the
> task
>  
> 
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> Linux-audio-dev at lists.linuxaudio.org
> http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev

Why doesn't Harry learn howto do a dial. I just take a look at his code
and it just sucks. Why don't you take a look how it should have been
done. For sure you will get it for once.

https://sourceforge.net/p/ags/code/HEAD/tree/src/ags/widget/ags_dial.c

kind regards
Joël