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OSS needs more UI/UX people, and I think Tantacrul is fantastic for this. His twitter (https://twitter.com/Tantacrul https://twitter.com/Tantacrul) and youtube

by wexq 5y ago

OSS needs more UI/UX people, and I think Tantacrul is fantastic for this. His twitter (https://twitter.com/Tantacrul https://twitter.com/Tantacrul) and youtube (https://www.youtube.com/user/martinthekearykid https://www.youtube.com/user/martinthekearykid) are full of interesting tidbits, an you can tell he's passionate about things. Even if you don't do music/notation his video on Sibelius, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKx1wnXClcI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKx1wnXClcI , is ridiculously funny, but also on point.

throw_m239339 5y ago
> OSS needs more UI/UX people, and I think Tantacrul is fantastic for this. True, Blender really exploded when they re-designed the interface. I hope someday GIMP team understand that. The software is solid, but the interface isn't great. Some very simple workflow changes made Blender easier to use.
- VadimPR 5y ago
  Where do you get UI/UX people in from?
  - ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
    Learn. That's what I did. The issue is that many designers and engineers loathe Usability and Accessibility people (like Jakob Nielsen and Don Norman). For me, it all started with Don Norman's excellent book The Design of Everyday Things[0] (nee The Psychology of Everyday Things). Reading that book changed the way that I view the world. I can't walk through a door, anymore, without evaluating its affordances and usability. The challenge (for me) is melding usability and aesthetics. In my experience, designing and implementing a truly usable software interface is hard. It's also highly iterative. A lot of "running things up the flagpole" stuff. I throw out a lot of code, and slaughter a lot of sacred cows. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things
    - dkdbejwi383 5y ago
      > The issue is that many designers and engineers loathe Usability and Accessibility people (like Jakob Nielsen and Don Norman) Which is silly because good UX that works for people with disabilities or impairments also benefits fully able users in the vast majority of cases
      - TeMPOraL 5y ago
        In fact, accessibility is probably the last remaining hope of power users[0]. With general-audience software, the market doesn't care much about the minority that are the serious users, and it's hard to make a convincing argument to business people here. However, accessibility does have a strong enough ethical argument behind it, which is also increasingly being backed by regulations. Allowing accessibility tools to work with an application involves annotating UI with machine-readable metadata about information displayed and operations available. That makes the interface comprehensible to any external software - including software that could use this information to provide an alternative, more ergonomic frontend, undoing various user-hostile decisions of the original design. -- [0] - By which I don't mean just computer nerds, but also everyone who uses some bit of software on a regular basis - particularly in context of work.
        mort96 5y ago
        100% agree. I've noticed this as well. A lot of the time, the best objective-sounding argument for something I want is "it's necessary for accessibility", even though _I_ want it for reasons which would've been ignored. And a whole lot of the settings I rely on to make my computing devices comfortable are hidden under "accessibility" menus in settings screens. There are even cases where the strongest argument for something to have a web version in addition to an Android/iOS app is accessibility. You can make some really interesting and specialized input hardware for Windows PCs which has no chance of working on an iPad, so there are people whose disabilities makes web apps way easier to use than any Android/iOS app. And if there exists a web app, power users can use the service from their comfortable desktop setup rather than from the tiny screen on their phone. Accessibility is the most effective argument against the "one-size-fits-all" "it works for 90% of users" thinking that's otherwise so pervasive.
  - matkoniecz 5y ago
    For start, nearly every software would benefit from running small scale UX test. Take three people who never used given software, ask them to do the most basic tasks. And fix the most common problems. Your software is much harder to use than you expect. You do not need UI/UX people, massive scale testing to fix low hanging fruit.
  - tclancy 5y ago
    I think it’s a culture change on the developer side. I was exposed to UI UX about fifteen years ago and worked with a number of terrific designers who put users first. The problem is as devs the job can feel overwhelming enough and then when you get to a point you feel is done, now you have someone telling you you need to redo it. It’s an egoless thing one has to develop and we don’t necessarily encourage that. I think the number of people who get to Beginners Mind as devs is as much Survivorship Bias as anything else.
    - wpietri 5y ago
      Yeah, I think the definition of "done" is a great thing to focus on here. For me, the definition is generally, "works for the user". But waterfall-ish processes encourage developers to think that done means "finished the code". But that's really "finished the code for their first understanding of somebody's first guess at what might solve a user problem". If something isn't "done" until it has at least survived a first user test, then we don't need to be quite as egoless, because we are a participant in the larger problem-solving process. I also think your point on being overwhelmed matters a lot. Too many software processes are push-based, where an executive is cramming things in the hopper and insisting on a pace. I like pull-based processes. E.g., having a kanban board with WIP limits, so an individual unit of work takes as long as it takes.
- shawnz 5y ago
  I would say the GIMP team does understand that and they often put a high focus on UI improvements on their roadmaps. I suppose they just have limited resources to work with.
  - open0 5y ago
    I find the UI of recent versions of GIMP to be very nice for the simple image editing / processing that I do.
    - mort96 5y ago
      One thing I don't understand is the move to monochrome icons. I'm really bloody good at recognizing shape+color combinations; the old icons were ugly, but I was able to find the tool I wanted in an instant. After the redesign of the icon pack, I always find myself slowly iterating through every icon in the toolbox to try to find the particular abstract monochrome shape I want. I think a redesign of the icons was necessary, because the old ones don't look amazing. But you can make tasteful icons which are also colorful and recognizable. (And I know you can switch icon themes, but when we're talking about UX, we're largely talking about the out-of-the-box experience. 99.9% of users are going to stick with the default icon pack.)
      - augustk 5y ago
        You can still use the old colored icons if you choose Edit -> Preferences -> Icon Theme -> Color.
        mort96 5y ago
        I know. You might've missed this part: > (And I know you can switch icon themes, but when we're talking about UX, we're largely talking about the out-of-the-box experience. 99.9% of users are going to stick with the default icon pack.)
        augustk 5y ago
- marrs 5y ago
  It’s odd that you singled out Gimp as they are the only free software project I’m aware of who engaged a professional UX consultant to redesign their UI, and that must be maybe 15 years ago
  - randmeerkat 5y ago
    Gimp is great, but it’s also the UI that I think of when I think of OSS that lacks finish. Hiring a UX consultant one time, 15 years ago, isn’t how people realize a good user experience. That’s why companies employ UI / UX engineers full time…
    - marrs 5y ago
      He wasn’t hired, he was a part of the development team for a number of years. For all I know, he still is. I still think you’ve chosen a bad example. Gimp’s UI is no worse than Photoshop’s, and that’s not open source.
- cbozeman 5y ago
  > True, Blender really exploded when they re-designed the interface. So this must be what happened... over and over I've heard about people switching to Blender now, even many professionals. I tried it many many years ago and found it, quite honestly, awful. I guess I should download it again and see how things have changed.
  - WrtCdEvrydy 5y ago
    Basically, Blender took a lot of cues from modern UX design so it looks good... and makes the technical bits look good.
mxcrossb 5y ago
IMO the problem is that OSS developers hate any change that’s made to a UI because it breaks their workflow. As a result, a lot of OSS has old style interfaces, and it’s hard for UI designers to convince the others to make changes.
- bayindirh 5y ago
  I do not hate when an application I use revamp its UI (e.g. Pixelmator -> Pixelmator Pro). However, developing good UX is as hard as developing robust code and high performance algorithms. Unless the devs get UX improvement backwards (cough GNOME cough), there's nothing to worry IMHO. OTOH, for a CLI application, backwards compatibility and/or graceful depreciation is key.
- wexq 5y ago
  Agreed here. And also the attitude of "works for me" really pushes usability people out.
- matkoniecz 5y ago
  I think that more accurate would be saying is that OSS is often developed by people already using it and used to weird interface and not benefiting from it being usable by newbies. So there is much smaller motivation to improve it. And avoiding change for the sake of change is something that I actually like. One of reasons why I switched to LibreOffice and later to Linux is because I am not fan of relearning interface without a good reason. ------------- But nearly every software would benefit from running small scale UX test. Take three people, ask them to do the most basic tasks - and fix the most common problems. Your software is much harder to use than you expect.
- smolder 5y ago
  I think a good approach sometimes is to decouple UI from other things as much as possible, then make "classic" UI optional for the people who value that while the improvements are worked on separately. It depends on the project if that just ends up being too much of a hassle or not.
- e3bc54b2 5y ago
goodmachine 5y ago
Thank you for the Sibelius video link. It's very good indeed. The thing is (unmentioned in Tantacrul's Audacity video) is that Audacity's UI has always - from day one - been a terrible copy of the much beloved SoundEdit16, afaict. I just want something as easy to use as SoundEdit was, if Tantacrul is reading.
pastelsky 5y ago
I wish so too! Being a UI/UX person who has an eye for good design, I'd love to contribute to OSS projects. I think a lot more OSS projects should reach out for contributions in improving usability — it's almost always what separates OSS projects from paid alternatives.

by wexq 5y ago

throw_m239339 5y ago

> OSS needs more UI/UX people, and I think Tantacrul is fantastic for this. True, Blender really exploded when they re-designed the interface. I hope someday GIMP team understand that. The software is solid, but the interface isn't great. Some very simple workflow changes made Blender easier to use.

VadimPR 5y ago
Where do you get UI/UX people in from?
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
  Learn. That's what I did. The issue is that many designers and engineers loathe Usability and Accessibility people (like Jakob Nielsen and Don Norman). For me, it all started with Don Norman's excellent book The Design of Everyday Things[0] (nee The Psychology of Everyday Things). Reading that book changed the way that I view the world. I can't walk through a door, anymore, without evaluating its affordances and usability. The challenge (for me) is melding usability and aesthetics. In my experience, designing and implementing a truly usable software interface is hard. It's also highly iterative. A lot of "running things up the flagpole" stuff. I throw out a lot of code, and slaughter a lot of sacred cows. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things
  - dkdbejwi383 5y ago
    > The issue is that many designers and engineers loathe Usability and Accessibility people (like Jakob Nielsen and Don Norman) Which is silly because good UX that works for people with disabilities or impairments also benefits fully able users in the vast majority of cases
    - TeMPOraL 5y ago
      In fact, accessibility is probably the last remaining hope of power users[0]. With general-audience software, the market doesn't care much about the minority that are the serious users, and it's hard to make a convincing argument to business people here. However, accessibility does have a strong enough ethical argument behind it, which is also increasingly being backed by regulations. Allowing accessibility tools to work with an application involves annotating UI with machine-readable metadata about information displayed and operations available. That makes the interface comprehensible to any external software - including software that could use this information to provide an alternative, more ergonomic frontend, undoing various user-hostile decisions of the original design. -- [0] - By which I don't mean just computer nerds, but also everyone who uses some bit of software on a regular basis - particularly in context of work.
      - mort96 5y ago
        100% agree. I've noticed this as well. A lot of the time, the best objective-sounding argument for something I want is "it's necessary for accessibility", even though _I_ want it for reasons which would've been ignored. And a whole lot of the settings I rely on to make my computing devices comfortable are hidden under "accessibility" menus in settings screens. There are even cases where the strongest argument for something to have a web version in addition to an Android/iOS app is accessibility. You can make some really interesting and specialized input hardware for Windows PCs which has no chance of working on an iPad, so there are people whose disabilities makes web apps way easier to use than any Android/iOS app. And if there exists a web app, power users can use the service from their comfortable desktop setup rather than from the tiny screen on their phone. Accessibility is the most effective argument against the "one-size-fits-all" "it works for 90% of users" thinking that's otherwise so pervasive.
- matkoniecz 5y ago
  For start, nearly every software would benefit from running small scale UX test. Take three people who never used given software, ask them to do the most basic tasks. And fix the most common problems. Your software is much harder to use than you expect. You do not need UI/UX people, massive scale testing to fix low hanging fruit.
- tclancy 5y ago
  I think it’s a culture change on the developer side. I was exposed to UI UX about fifteen years ago and worked with a number of terrific designers who put users first. The problem is as devs the job can feel overwhelming enough and then when you get to a point you feel is done, now you have someone telling you you need to redo it. It’s an egoless thing one has to develop and we don’t necessarily encourage that. I think the number of people who get to Beginners Mind as devs is as much Survivorship Bias as anything else.
  - wpietri 5y ago
    Yeah, I think the definition of "done" is a great thing to focus on here. For me, the definition is generally, "works for the user". But waterfall-ish processes encourage developers to think that done means "finished the code". But that's really "finished the code for their first understanding of somebody's first guess at what might solve a user problem". If something isn't "done" until it has at least survived a first user test, then we don't need to be quite as egoless, because we are a participant in the larger problem-solving process. I also think your point on being overwhelmed matters a lot. Too many software processes are push-based, where an executive is cramming things in the hopper and insisting on a pace. I like pull-based processes. E.g., having a kanban board with WIP limits, so an individual unit of work takes as long as it takes.
shawnz 5y ago
I would say the GIMP team does understand that and they often put a high focus on UI improvements on their roadmaps. I suppose they just have limited resources to work with.
- open0 5y ago
  I find the UI of recent versions of GIMP to be very nice for the simple image editing / processing that I do.
  - mort96 5y ago
    One thing I don't understand is the move to monochrome icons. I'm really bloody good at recognizing shape+color combinations; the old icons were ugly, but I was able to find the tool I wanted in an instant. After the redesign of the icon pack, I always find myself slowly iterating through every icon in the toolbox to try to find the particular abstract monochrome shape I want. I think a redesign of the icons was necessary, because the old ones don't look amazing. But you can make tasteful icons which are also colorful and recognizable. (And I know you can switch icon themes, but when we're talking about UX, we're largely talking about the out-of-the-box experience. 99.9% of users are going to stick with the default icon pack.)
    - augustk 5y ago
      You can still use the old colored icons if you choose Edit -> Preferences -> Icon Theme -> Color.
      - mort96 5y ago
        I know. You might've missed this part: > (And I know you can switch icon themes, but when we're talking about UX, we're largely talking about the out-of-the-box experience. 99.9% of users are going to stick with the default icon pack.)
        augustk 5y ago
marrs 5y ago
It’s odd that you singled out Gimp as they are the only free software project I’m aware of who engaged a professional UX consultant to redesign their UI, and that must be maybe 15 years ago
- randmeerkat 5y ago
  Gimp is great, but it’s also the UI that I think of when I think of OSS that lacks finish. Hiring a UX consultant one time, 15 years ago, isn’t how people realize a good user experience. That’s why companies employ UI / UX engineers full time…
  - marrs 5y ago
    He wasn’t hired, he was a part of the development team for a number of years. For all I know, he still is. I still think you’ve chosen a bad example. Gimp’s UI is no worse than Photoshop’s, and that’s not open source.
cbozeman 5y ago
> True, Blender really exploded when they re-designed the interface. So this must be what happened... over and over I've heard about people switching to Blender now, even many professionals. I tried it many many years ago and found it, quite honestly, awful. I guess I should download it again and see how things have changed.
- WrtCdEvrydy 5y ago
  Basically, Blender took a lot of cues from modern UX design so it looks good... and makes the technical bits look good.

mxcrossb 5y ago

IMO the problem is that OSS developers hate any change that’s made to a UI because it breaks their workflow. As a result, a lot of OSS has old style interfaces, and it’s hard for UI designers to convince the others to make changes.

bayindirh 5y ago
I do not hate when an application I use revamp its UI (e.g. Pixelmator -> Pixelmator Pro). However, developing good UX is as hard as developing robust code and high performance algorithms. Unless the devs get UX improvement backwards (cough GNOME cough), there's nothing to worry IMHO. OTOH, for a CLI application, backwards compatibility and/or graceful depreciation is key.
wexq 5y ago
Agreed here. And also the attitude of "works for me" really pushes usability people out.
matkoniecz 5y ago
I think that more accurate would be saying is that OSS is often developed by people already using it and used to weird interface and not benefiting from it being usable by newbies. So there is much smaller motivation to improve it. And avoiding change for the sake of change is something that I actually like. One of reasons why I switched to LibreOffice and later to Linux is because I am not fan of relearning interface without a good reason. ------------- But nearly every software would benefit from running small scale UX test. Take three people, ask them to do the most basic tasks - and fix the most common problems. Your software is much harder to use than you expect.
smolder 5y ago
I think a good approach sometimes is to decouple UI from other things as much as possible, then make "classic" UI optional for the people who value that while the improvements are worked on separately. It depends on the project if that just ends up being too much of a hassle or not.
e3bc54b2 5y ago

goodmachine 5y ago

Thank you for the Sibelius video link. It's very good indeed. The thing is (unmentioned in Tantacrul's Audacity video) is that Audacity's UI has always - from day one - been a terrible copy of the much beloved SoundEdit16, afaict. I just want something as easy to use as SoundEdit was, if Tantacrul is reading.

pastelsky 5y ago

I wish so too! Being a UI/UX person who has an eye for good design, I'd love to contribute to OSS projects. I think a lot more OSS projects should reach out for contributions in improving usability — it's almost always what separates OSS projects from paid alternatives.