Re: AU interface consistency
Re: AU interface consistency
- Subject: Re: AU interface consistency
- From: Urs Heckmann <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2002 22:40:34 +0200
Am Dienstag, 01.10.02, um 21:24 Uhr (Europe/Berlin) schrieb Andy:
On Tuesday, October 1, 2002, at 05:59 pm, email@hidden wrote:
but it is hard to think of another way to present a control surface
mmm, another interesting point, often missed it seems: Yes it is a
control surface. One that was originally designed for two hands with
fingers and thumbs. Now most users have only a mouse and here we are
trying to get them to use that control surface. That is of course, why
we eventually end up buying tons of MIDI controllers to get back to
the fingers and thumbs hands on feeling ;-)
Hi,
this thread starts to bcome interesting, indeed.
From the industrial/graphics designers point of view, the
looks-like-real-vintage-gear approach is not just a marketing value or
eye candy. It is also meant to (if made good, of course) to give
identity. It gives a semantical statement of the character of the
parameter behind the control. And of course the overall appearance
should represent the character of the plugin. Things that provide
analog-like warmth could simply look tube driven. For things we know
from real life can make an icon of virtual functionality.
A classical example are the emulations of real synths which sport
citations of their original appearance. Hence you know what they do and
you know how to use them, even if their features are extended.
Using standard controls with standard appearance (like Aqua) wouldn't
represent anything other than being neutral. This is surely not
desirable, as making music is usually not quite deterministic science
but rather intuition and play.
Another point is that usual Human Interface Guidelines don't exactly
apply to musical software. Guidelines commonly weight all parameters
equally in importance. This derives from the notion that all parameters
displayed in a single context manage a global aspect of a document
(Exception would be a font palette for text where different font styles
could be used). Less important items are banned on subpages.
In music everything is different. The whole set of parameters, maybe
thousands, apply to just one stream of simple information, samples over
time == musical output that is.
All parameters are interconnected to provide one output. Hierarchical
layers (Notes, Sounds, Mixers etc.) are basically completely borrowed
from reality where these also have physically been entities.
Each entity in itself just contributes a single aspect to the output.
The approaches made to meet this contextual complexity have grown
within the history of say the past twenty years which itself created
new iconongraphy, when you think of waveform editors etc.
This shouldn't be sacrificed to the seemingly ease of standard controls
aka over-interpreted consistency.
I can't go in further detail now (I rather go to an appointment now
where I'm already late ;-), but I think it is clear that non-standard
interface mentality is not just fancy but indeed
functionality/usability.
Cheers,
;) Urs
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