[Ardour-Users] a few thoughts

[Adriano Petrosillo]

Oh, but I know that UI design is a completely different story. That's why I
said Ardour should invest in UI design (maybe picking up a UI designer or
hiring one as an investment for the future).
If you remember, I specifically cited usability experts that make a living
by focusing only on these very aspects.

But coding the features I was talking about (editable track templates with
standard widgets and elements) is, I think, quite trivial (compared to
their normal work) and separate from UI design proper.
You could do it using "off-the-shelf" widgets and it would still be more
functional than not having it as a function, then of course, there is the
other issue of making Ardour "pretty" which is, I think, equally important
(where "pretty" means intuitive, non-fatiguing to the eyes, sleek, elegant
harmonious, and not shiny, vaguely vulgar, bright and that will become
dated in a few years time. Think Apple Aqua vs. the Windows XP theme: the
first has stood the test of time, the second hasn't).

2012/12/4 Thomas Vecchione <seablaede at gmail.com>

>
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 4, 2012 at 2:21 PM, Adriano Petrosillo <ampetrosillo at gmail.com
> > wrote:
>
>>
>> So you're saying Paul and his team would be utterly crap at making the
>> interface more customizable? After having coded an audio engine, written an
>> audio API (Jack), they really are unable to make some adjustments to the
>> GUI? If that were the case, I'd say that they either only know how to code
>> in very low-level C, or they are idiot savants who excel in doing one thing
>> and one thing only, that is coding a whole DAW but, at the same time, they
>> are completely inept at coding GUIs.
>>
>>
> Well two things:
>
> 1. That is very clearly trying to put words in my mouth I never said.  I
> said focus on what you are good at, not that by doing so means you would be
> absolute crap at other things.
> 2. UI design is a COMPLETELY different skillset than coding low level
> audio processing.  Just because you are good with one doesn't mean you are
> good with the other, which is in fact, by the way, part of why Thorsten has
> given some of his time to help improve the UI design of Ardour and other
> programs.  By the way this is also why many commercial software in all
> sorts of fields will have UI design specialists on their team that make the
> mockup.  This is why in the current website redesign for my full time work,
> I just got out of a meeting with the designer, vs the programmer who I had
> a quick meeting with two days ago, vs myself who has done both but I know
> full well that i am not as good a designer as this guy and while I might be
> able to hold my own against the programmer, I don't have time to compete
> either and it isn't worth my time considering the end goal is the same:)
>
>      Seablade
>
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