7 ms·

Isn't that the classic problem of software engineers also being responsible for UX? There's a reason UX is a whole field of its own.

dylan604 2y ago
Exactly this thread. I use Adobe suite of software, and I really don't even know what GEGL means. Nor should I need to know. Organize filters by function. Blur->radial/Gaussian,linear,etc. Noise->add/remove/etc. Designing the UI based on how the code a filter operates is cool for where the .cpp files live is not how the users think. Then again, a user of GIMP over other apps probably does filter that user into a more techy side of user than artistic side, so I'm probably eating a bowl of crow soon. Seems like maybe time for FOSS UIs to start a Fiverr account looking for UI/UX peeps.
- brudgers 2y ago
  If you use Adobe, you’re not the prime design persona.
  - dylan604 2y ago
    I don't get the implication. I never claimed I was a designer. I'm a get shit done type of person. An operator if you will. Scariest thing you can show me is a Cmd-n blank sheet of paper. Give me content and a task, and it'll get done. Your assumption I'm a designer is just that, and I'm perfectly fine being an ass on my own and do not need your help
    - ChadNauseam 2y ago
      I think they might have been implying that you’re not the person they should be designing for. it’s arguable that they should be designing for people who have never used an image editor before. if they were optimizing for adobe users, they should just copy adobe as much as possible
      - whywhywhywhy 2y ago
        I’d argue they’re doing neither these things.
    - brudgers 2y ago
      A design persona is an imaginary person that designers use when thinking about users at a medium level of abstraction…somewhere between actual users and demographics. https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/personas-why-and-how-you-should-use-them?srsltid=AfmBOopXRI4HdFXW6wJubeyHgSr0rKXKZ3voGjW6ot_5XhXt0k1CEwJJ https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/person... I didn’t assume anything about you. I took your words at face value. To the degree I said anything about you it was that perhaps Gimp is not for you (because everything isn’t for everybody).
      - lupusreal 2y ago
        A "design persona" is a stereotype that designers use to justify their decision to discriminate against some subset of users. It seems innocent at first, but it inevitably devolves into the developers crudely binning individual users who submit but reports of feature requests into those stereotypes and then, very often, disregarding their feedback without thoughtful consideration. "Our Personas document says this software isn't for engineers who taught themselves to use Linux in highschool. This guy who submitted a request to add tabs to the interface looks like a nerd, we don't need to take his suggestion seriously even though he's suggesting a normal thing people who fit into other personas would also find useful."
- emidoots 2y ago
  I think a better UX for average consumer would be more a side-swiping filter menu similar to that of social media mobile apps, with different non-math style names "default blur", "circle blur", etc. Especially as more people do not use desktop computers today. Also maybe LLM integration so you can just explain what you want done, then it does it, instead of needing to follow some tutorial to learn the software
  - cubefox 2y ago
    > Also maybe LLM integration so you can just explain what you want done, then it does it, instead of needing to follow some tutorial to learn the software I like how this counts as a reasonable side remark today but would have been utterly delusional just a few years ago.
  - hnben 2y ago
    > LLM integration you mean diffusion-model integration?
  - whostolemyhat 2y ago
    Yes, why bother learning how to use things? (or invest in UX/user research)
- necovek 2y ago
  That's exactly how most filters are grouped. And then there's the GEGL stuff that's leaking implementation details to the user: obviously it should be fixed, but I am certain you can find similar stuff in Adobe's products. I, for one, having recently been pushed to online MS stuff, certainly see plenty of that in their tools (too many, really, even worse than GNOME ever was when I was active there).
  - whywhywhywhy 2y ago
    >I am certain you can find similar stuff in Adobe's products It’s just not comparable and I’m sorry with the history of GIMP it’s all just indefensible, let’s not forget in the two decades it took them to implement Adjustment Layers Blender started focusing on the user not the developer and became a huge contender against non open software, hard to find 3D artists under 25 who didn’t learn via Blender and use it professionally. An opportunity completely squandered by a poor culture.
    - necovek 2y ago
      GIMP itself has been going on for around 30 years now. I think it proves that the approach to development and design is "defensible". Blender entered where there was no other good competitor in the market, with a company behind it that built a business around it, and set the standards for UI. GIMP always kinda had to fight against the incumbents that are too ingrained into customer muscle memory to accept any change. Really, are you saying that the location for GEGL filters in the menu is what stops you from using Gimp? So the GIMP team wisely chose not to fight, and to build their own thing that serves (hundreds of?) thousands of happy users worldwide (I am one of them: I don't do image editing professionally, but people have complimented me on what I've achieved with Gimp; similarly, moving away from Gimp shortcuts would be expensive for me and would make me really hate any big change of the sort).
      - whywhywhywhy 2y ago
        Think we’re revising history here, Blender was completely shunned until they started doing the exact opposite of GIMP and building for their users instead of building for the sake of building. It certainly had no first mover advantage and even poor students spent thousands just to not have to learn it and no professional studios used it. This all changed within a few years of them fixing the UI and focusing on users. >GEGL filters in the menu is what stops you from using Gimp? It’s one example but my point is already proven by you calling them “GEGL Filters” step back from your biases for a second and really think about what you wrote and the wider implications to the rest of the application and its users. People just feel they instinctively have to defend GIMP because it was one of the early larger real desktop Linux open source successes but to me it represents one thing, completely wasted opportunity and the importance of how culture and ideology of a team can squander something that could have been amazing. “Oh people would never have switched from Photoshop, the workflow and keys are different” is pure cope, we know this because Figma decimated Photoshop and Illustrator as web/app design tools in about 2 years just by offering a better tool. GIMP could have done this 20+ years ago with the right ideology.
Someone1234 2y ago
UX was a field in the 1990s when it was at its height. We still have designers, but most software houses closed their academic UI/UX research houses and just hire people that make things that look attractive. If you've recently tried to teach a computer illiterate person to do something, you'll know what I mean. No consistency, no internal logic or rules, just pretty stuff that you just need to know.
- eru 2y ago
  Windows 95, of all things, was actually a good example of a company doing 'proper' research driving UI work. Btw, I loathe the term UX, because 'interface' (in UI) should already be a big enough term to not just mean pretty graphics, but the whole _interface_ between user and program. But such is the euphemism treadmill.
  - VilleSalonen 2y ago
    But UX is bigger than UI. Good UX might simplify some use case so that user might not need to see any UI at all.
    - somat 2y ago
      That is still the man-machine interface UX is just a weaselly sales term, "Our product is not some mere (sneers) interface, no, over here it is a whole experience, you want an experience don't you?"
      - necovek 2y ago
        I don't think it's weaselly: it's not the first term that has lost its original meaning (like "hacker" or, ahem, "cloud") and required introducing specifiers to go back to the original meaning.
        thaumasiotes 2y ago
        For fun, I did a search for "user interface" before:1996-06-01 . I found a paper that was definitely taking the perspective that the "user interface" encompasses all the ways in which the user can accomplish something via the software. It rated the effectiveness of a user interface in terms of the time taken to complete various specific tasks. (While remarking that other metrics matter to the concept too, and also measuring user satisfaction and error rates.) But that paper also suggested how the term might have specialized - four pieces of software were studied, and they are presented in a table that gives their "interface technology", in two cases a "character-based interface" and in the other two a "graphical user interface". Enough usage like that and you can see how "interface" might come to mean "what the user interacts with" as opposed to "how tasks are performed". ( https://www.nngroup.com/articles/iterative-design/ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/iterative-design/ . It really is dated 1993, which I made a point of checking because Google assigns the "date" of a search result based on textual analysis, and it is frequently very badly wrong. I can't really slam the approach, which I assume was necessary to get the right answer here, but the implementation isn't working.)
dhosek 2y ago
I remember writing the documentation for the payment processor app used at Iron Mountain and the flow for dealing with a check deposit was incredibly convoluted. The (Windows desktop) application was designed by a team from one of the big 5 consulting agencies and they clearly had never thought about how the application would be used when they designed it.
DidYaWipe 2y ago
That's the classic stereotype. What we often find in open-source media applications is intentional and pompous obscurity. "Engineers" use the same words end-users do. Choosing meaningless jargon is just douchey.
- ChadNauseam 2y ago
  that’s not it at all. everyone implementing an image editor knows what a gaussian blur is, but the average person doesn’t. it requires active effort to forget what you know and empathize with someone who is seeing these concepts for the first time. In my opinion, it’s an effort that the volunteers working on GIMP aren’t obligated to put in if they don’t feel like it
  - onli 2y ago
    The GIMP team actively changed their software to better support user workflows, like when they moved from "save as" (with image formats as options) to "export". So there definitely is intent there to do the work necessary to make the software useable for their target group. Problem was: the change was explained in terms of user persona and their workflows, but there was no mention of user tests...
    - rleigh 2y ago
      Honestly, I found that one of the most user-hostile workflows they implemented to date. It's really obnoxious. The number of times I've wanted to save in their native XCF file format is... zero. But I always want to save in a standard image format, and I don't really consider that to be exporting, just saving. I understand why they wanted this, but I don't think many of their actual users did.
      - chongli 2y ago
        They do that to preserve data. If you’re making a complex image with all sorts of layers and masks and then you save to a JPEG, you lose all that information as the image is flattened and compressed. Saving in the native format lets you be able to open the file again at a later time and resume working without losing any data. Users would be seriously upset if they made JPEG the default and the native format a buried option. People would be losing data left and right.
andrepd 2y ago
Jesus christ, have you looked at the state of UI over the last ~10 years? Not really a great portfolio for "UX as a whole field".
sicariusnoctis 2y ago
That's only true if the engineers are not allowed to copy/steal from existing designs. There are plenty that are better than GIMP (e.g. Photoshop, Krita, ...). If nothing else, make it easy to build a layer on top so that Photoshop can be replicated nearly exactly.

dylan604 2y ago

Exactly this thread. I use Adobe suite of software, and I really don't even know what GEGL means. Nor should I need to know. Organize filters by function. Blur->radial/Gaussian,linear,etc. Noise->add/remove/etc. Designing the UI based on how the code a filter operates is cool for where the .cpp files live is not how the users think. Then again, a user of GIMP over other apps probably does filter that user into a more techy side of user than artistic side, so I'm probably eating a bowl of crow soon. Seems like maybe time for FOSS UIs to start a Fiverr account looking for UI/UX peeps.

brudgers 2y ago
If you use Adobe, you’re not the prime design persona.
- dylan604 2y ago
  I don't get the implication. I never claimed I was a designer. I'm a get shit done type of person. An operator if you will. Scariest thing you can show me is a Cmd-n blank sheet of paper. Give me content and a task, and it'll get done. Your assumption I'm a designer is just that, and I'm perfectly fine being an ass on my own and do not need your help
  - ChadNauseam 2y ago
    I think they might have been implying that you’re not the person they should be designing for. it’s arguable that they should be designing for people who have never used an image editor before. if they were optimizing for adobe users, they should just copy adobe as much as possible
    - whywhywhywhy 2y ago
      I’d argue they’re doing neither these things.
  - brudgers 2y ago
    A design persona is an imaginary person that designers use when thinking about users at a medium level of abstraction…somewhere between actual users and demographics. https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/personas-why-and-how-you-should-use-them?srsltid=AfmBOopXRI4HdFXW6wJubeyHgSr0rKXKZ3voGjW6ot_5XhXt0k1CEwJJ https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/person... I didn’t assume anything about you. I took your words at face value. To the degree I said anything about you it was that perhaps Gimp is not for you (because everything isn’t for everybody).
    - lupusreal 2y ago
      A "design persona" is a stereotype that designers use to justify their decision to discriminate against some subset of users. It seems innocent at first, but it inevitably devolves into the developers crudely binning individual users who submit but reports of feature requests into those stereotypes and then, very often, disregarding their feedback without thoughtful consideration. "Our Personas document says this software isn't for engineers who taught themselves to use Linux in highschool. This guy who submitted a request to add tabs to the interface looks like a nerd, we don't need to take his suggestion seriously even though he's suggesting a normal thing people who fit into other personas would also find useful."
emidoots 2y ago
I think a better UX for average consumer would be more a side-swiping filter menu similar to that of social media mobile apps, with different non-math style names "default blur", "circle blur", etc. Especially as more people do not use desktop computers today. Also maybe LLM integration so you can just explain what you want done, then it does it, instead of needing to follow some tutorial to learn the software
- cubefox 2y ago
  > Also maybe LLM integration so you can just explain what you want done, then it does it, instead of needing to follow some tutorial to learn the software I like how this counts as a reasonable side remark today but would have been utterly delusional just a few years ago.
- hnben 2y ago
  > LLM integration you mean diffusion-model integration?
- whostolemyhat 2y ago
  Yes, why bother learning how to use things? (or invest in UX/user research)
necovek 2y ago
That's exactly how most filters are grouped. And then there's the GEGL stuff that's leaking implementation details to the user: obviously it should be fixed, but I am certain you can find similar stuff in Adobe's products. I, for one, having recently been pushed to online MS stuff, certainly see plenty of that in their tools (too many, really, even worse than GNOME ever was when I was active there).
- whywhywhywhy 2y ago
  >I am certain you can find similar stuff in Adobe's products It’s just not comparable and I’m sorry with the history of GIMP it’s all just indefensible, let’s not forget in the two decades it took them to implement Adjustment Layers Blender started focusing on the user not the developer and became a huge contender against non open software, hard to find 3D artists under 25 who didn’t learn via Blender and use it professionally. An opportunity completely squandered by a poor culture.
  - necovek 2y ago
    GIMP itself has been going on for around 30 years now. I think it proves that the approach to development and design is "defensible". Blender entered where there was no other good competitor in the market, with a company behind it that built a business around it, and set the standards for UI. GIMP always kinda had to fight against the incumbents that are too ingrained into customer muscle memory to accept any change. Really, are you saying that the location for GEGL filters in the menu is what stops you from using Gimp? So the GIMP team wisely chose not to fight, and to build their own thing that serves (hundreds of?) thousands of happy users worldwide (I am one of them: I don't do image editing professionally, but people have complimented me on what I've achieved with Gimp; similarly, moving away from Gimp shortcuts would be expensive for me and would make me really hate any big change of the sort).
    - whywhywhywhy 2y ago
      Think we’re revising history here, Blender was completely shunned until they started doing the exact opposite of GIMP and building for their users instead of building for the sake of building. It certainly had no first mover advantage and even poor students spent thousands just to not have to learn it and no professional studios used it. This all changed within a few years of them fixing the UI and focusing on users. >GEGL filters in the menu is what stops you from using Gimp? It’s one example but my point is already proven by you calling them “GEGL Filters” step back from your biases for a second and really think about what you wrote and the wider implications to the rest of the application and its users. People just feel they instinctively have to defend GIMP because it was one of the early larger real desktop Linux open source successes but to me it represents one thing, completely wasted opportunity and the importance of how culture and ideology of a team can squander something that could have been amazing. “Oh people would never have switched from Photoshop, the workflow and keys are different” is pure cope, we know this because Figma decimated Photoshop and Illustrator as web/app design tools in about 2 years just by offering a better tool. GIMP could have done this 20+ years ago with the right ideology.

Someone1234 2y ago

UX was a field in the 1990s when it was at its height. We still have designers, but most software houses closed their academic UI/UX research houses and just hire people that make things that look attractive. If you've recently tried to teach a computer illiterate person to do something, you'll know what I mean. No consistency, no internal logic or rules, just pretty stuff that you just need to know.

eru 2y ago
Windows 95, of all things, was actually a good example of a company doing 'proper' research driving UI work. Btw, I loathe the term UX, because 'interface' (in UI) should already be a big enough term to not just mean pretty graphics, but the whole _interface_ between user and program. But such is the euphemism treadmill.
- VilleSalonen 2y ago
  But UX is bigger than UI. Good UX might simplify some use case so that user might not need to see any UI at all.
  - somat 2y ago
    That is still the man-machine interface UX is just a weaselly sales term, "Our product is not some mere (sneers) interface, no, over here it is a whole experience, you want an experience don't you?"
    - necovek 2y ago
      I don't think it's weaselly: it's not the first term that has lost its original meaning (like "hacker" or, ahem, "cloud") and required introducing specifiers to go back to the original meaning.
      - thaumasiotes 2y ago
        For fun, I did a search for "user interface" before:1996-06-01 . I found a paper that was definitely taking the perspective that the "user interface" encompasses all the ways in which the user can accomplish something via the software. It rated the effectiveness of a user interface in terms of the time taken to complete various specific tasks. (While remarking that other metrics matter to the concept too, and also measuring user satisfaction and error rates.) But that paper also suggested how the term might have specialized - four pieces of software were studied, and they are presented in a table that gives their "interface technology", in two cases a "character-based interface" and in the other two a "graphical user interface". Enough usage like that and you can see how "interface" might come to mean "what the user interacts with" as opposed to "how tasks are performed". ( https://www.nngroup.com/articles/iterative-design/ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/iterative-design/ . It really is dated 1993, which I made a point of checking because Google assigns the "date" of a search result based on textual analysis, and it is frequently very badly wrong. I can't really slam the approach, which I assume was necessary to get the right answer here, but the implementation isn't working.)

dhosek 2y ago

I remember writing the documentation for the payment processor app used at Iron Mountain and the flow for dealing with a check deposit was incredibly convoluted. The (Windows desktop) application was designed by a team from one of the big 5 consulting agencies and they clearly had never thought about how the application would be used when they designed it.

DidYaWipe 2y ago

That's the classic stereotype. What we often find in open-source media applications is intentional and pompous obscurity. "Engineers" use the same words end-users do. Choosing meaningless jargon is just douchey.

ChadNauseam 2y ago
that’s not it at all. everyone implementing an image editor knows what a gaussian blur is, but the average person doesn’t. it requires active effort to forget what you know and empathize with someone who is seeing these concepts for the first time. In my opinion, it’s an effort that the volunteers working on GIMP aren’t obligated to put in if they don’t feel like it
- onli 2y ago
  The GIMP team actively changed their software to better support user workflows, like when they moved from "save as" (with image formats as options) to "export". So there definitely is intent there to do the work necessary to make the software useable for their target group. Problem was: the change was explained in terms of user persona and their workflows, but there was no mention of user tests...
  - rleigh 2y ago
    Honestly, I found that one of the most user-hostile workflows they implemented to date. It's really obnoxious. The number of times I've wanted to save in their native XCF file format is... zero. But I always want to save in a standard image format, and I don't really consider that to be exporting, just saving. I understand why they wanted this, but I don't think many of their actual users did.
    - chongli 2y ago
      They do that to preserve data. If you’re making a complex image with all sorts of layers and masks and then you save to a JPEG, you lose all that information as the image is flattened and compressed. Saving in the native format lets you be able to open the file again at a later time and resume working without losing any data. Users would be seriously upset if they made JPEG the default and the native format a buried option. People would be losing data left and right.

andrepd 2y ago

Jesus christ, have you looked at the state of UI over the last ~10 years? Not really a great portfolio for "UX as a whole field".

sicariusnoctis 2y ago

That's only true if the engineers are not allowed to copy/steal from existing designs. There are plenty that are better than GIMP (e.g. Photoshop, Krita, ...). If nothing else, make it easy to build a layer on top so that Photoshop can be replicated nearly exactly.