linuxaudio.org

On 01/28/2011 05:27 AM, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
> Speaking of pretty interfaces, both MusE and OOM2 need a revamp. OOM2

quoted text
> 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 wonder if this is widely acknowledged and hence whether there's

> interest to look for connections with designers communities.

Heh, I'm flattered.
There's a lack of design competence, but also a lack of developer time

to implement design and/or a lack of better tools/infrastructure to make

that less of an issue.
Since a while now I'm thinking the solution can't be that I (or few

others) do more, continue to not earn money, try to clone myself ... Not

that I think of myself as being irreplaceable regarding my skills, but I

do feel lonely here, while I know where to look, if i want to feel like

a dwarf.
The incredible good fortune and honor I had to see several of my

concepts being implemented doesn't lend itself as a model for the wider

realm, anyway.
The way to become a Free Software developer seems to be clear enough

(not that there's no room for improvement), motivation seems to be OK.

Not so for Designers.
It seems people who pick up coding tend to have fewer illusions about

their skills and the quality level of their output and that there is

always a long path forward, things to learn. Or maybe that's just my bias.
Anyway: I think design in the FS realm fails on several levels.
Developers and the general audience *tend* to not understand how it

permeates everything, how it is pretty much defining and solving

problems in a top-down manner.
Instead there's this making-things-pretty thinking, the usability means

dumbing things down thinking and an unhealthy focus on familiarity

mistaken for being what's "intuitive".
Usually, when any well known project opens a venue to discuss design,

the result is a flood of opinions. But bring up a tricky issue, where no

pre-produced mere opinions match and you either get silence or pure

idiocy. Oh, and don't bother to push for formal processes, clear goals,

requirements, evaluating alternatives ... that's all just bureaucracy.
Counter reactions to that tend to lead to closed circles, perhaps

productive for a while, but becoming echo chambers.
Designer who want to try some not so usual approaches will soon find

them in a situation where learning to program will seem more worthwhile

than trying to convince developers. After only few steps they will start

to understand why developers don't tend to jump up and implement

something in an afternoon ...
But there are only so damn few hours in the day! The best we could have

might be developers with more design thinking, designers with more

technical knowledge, and much better tools that blur the lines between

mockups, prototypes and final implementations. Here, we should learn

from CAD tools regarding dealing with constraints and parameterization ,

Flash (the authoring tool) and Smalltalk environments like Pharo.
I have a still vague vision, something like a mix between Etherpad, a

wiki, bug tracker, sites like github and stackoverflow. A place where

design needs meet design solutions. With design methods and knowledge

baked into the infrastructure, both for educational effect and as an

accelerator. Where unfounded opinion, noise, sinks to the bottom, fast.
What a longish off-topic, took-too-long mail, but I do feel better now ;)
--

Thorsten Wilms
thorwil's design for free software:

http://thorwil.wordpress.com/

_______________________________________________

Linux-audio-user mailing list

Linux-audio-user@lists.linuxaudio.org

http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user