[LAU] State of the art GUI

[Alexandre Prokoudine]

On Fri, Jan 28, 2011 at 3:10 PM, fons wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 28, 2011 at 07:27:55AM +0300, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
>
>> Speaking of pretty interfaces, both MusE and OOM2 need a revamp. OOM2
>> is a step in the right direction, but it's still in late 90s (as well
>> as way too many other apps). Sadly, there is only one Thorsten Wilms,
>> and whoever did Wired is not around anymore. IMO, only Calf from Git
>> has state of the art UI today, with Ardour 3 next to it and Rosegarden
>> trotting along.
>
> I'd be interested to know what, in your opinion, makes a GUI 'state
> of the art' as opposed 'late 90s'. In other words, a list of features,
> properties etc. as opposed to just an example to look at.

Well, there's look and feel. Off-top of my head:

1. Color palette (quite a number of apps still use some kind of websafe palette)
2. Antialiased vs. non-antialiased graphics.
3. Quality of textures (if they are used).
4. Approach to icon design (this one changes a lot over time, even in
free software there's recent trend to move to symbolic icons).
5. Consistence of graphics (e.g. MusE2 has a mix of oldish and newish stuff).

Then there's usability. Off-top of my head again:

1. Whether you just keep adding controls you think you need as you go, or
whether you start from analysis of the big picture.
2. How you organize access to dialogs and how you design them.
3. Whether you have dialogs at all (Ableton).
4. How much is done right on canvas (Ardour3's MIDI editing).
5. Where you draw the line between clean UI and options required for
power users.
6. How the toolbox is designed and organized (e.g. users could do
without a separate tool for resizing MIDI events in a matrix editor,
because selection/drawing can do this function just fine)

Things like that define how modern UI looks, because a successful
product in any content production (well, in fact, simply in production
and manufacturing) industry should stay out of way and allow to do
things as fast as possible. I think it was Paul who wrote something
like that recently with regards to jingle composers.

I won't even go into details about how much out of place KDE looks on
a keyboard workstation's display (yes, I mean a well-known Italy-based
vendor :)). Luckily we are in MeeGo age finally, maybe interfaces will
catch up after new environments for embedded systems.

Time-wise, there are certain trends in recent years:

1. Less modal dialogs and more work right on canvas, because it helps
concentrating on your work.
2. Toned down tools/toolbars palette, for same reason.

We are also at the beginning of the time when interfaces should be
multitouch-ready.

As a matter of fact, audio and usability are in love/hate
relationship: I've met usability architects who said they would never
work on an audio software project again, because former customers
always ended up asking for UI that replicated audio hardware, not
being quite ready to move forward with time (well, there's lots of
money spent on usability research for audio hardware over last few
decades, but hardware is not software, eh? :))

That's the best reply I can come up with on Friday night :)

P.S. http://blog.mmiworks.net/2010/11/rise-of-proper-integration.html
is a highly recommended reading.

Alexandre Prokoudine
http://libregraphicsworld.org