On 5.11.18 09:34, Rolf Meyerhoff wrote:
if you have followed the UI refactoring discussion lately then you will
have noticed that the intended target audience for DT are programmers
and graphics nerds who really know what each module does, [...]
Rolf nails the issue.
The basic problem this discussion is about is UX created by developers.
Developers usually understand well what an algorithm can do. Let's call
it the 'domain of possibility'.
Users commonly only need a tiny subset of this domain. One that lets
them converge /as fast as possible/ to /optimal/ results for the task at
hand by manipulating the /least/ number of parameters.
Note that with every parameter on must manipulate to get to an optimal
result, the domain the user has to understand greatly increases. You are
basically adding a dimension (!) to the parameter vector that governs
the result.
Most developers, if they can't decide how to map any of an algorithm's
parameter automatically, to govern an optimal result, will just expose
that parameter in the UI.
You can look at this from two sides: laziness/ineptitude/reluctance to
understand what problem the algorithm will solve for the user (vs the
full domain of problems it can solve) or just giving 'more power' to the
user because you shouldn't 'assume' what subset of the domain they
actually need.
The latter is commonly the excuse developers will give but from my own
experience the main reason is ineptitude. It's just the difference
between how an artist's/user's brain is wired vs a developer's.
This is the single most common reason UX/UIs of software often suck(s):
developer's don't understand that users want /less/ parameters.
They naturally think that more power is good thing.
That's why today UX has become a profession. UX people are commonly
those that are technical enough to understand the domain and at the same
time the results most users look for. They can map it to the needs of
the user by producing a minimal UI that is abstracted away from the
original algorithm.
As DT's main user group are developers or at least people with much
better than average understanding of the underlying algorithms this is
not such an issue.
See the screenshot of OP from RawTherapee. There is a single drop-down
that disables the whole obscure set of parameters driving it's noise
reduction algorithm and switches it to a mode where it chooses good
parameters for the user. Aka: RawTherapee's noise reduction module seems
to have a mode where it has /zero/ parameters the user must adjust, from
the looks of it!!! Amazing, if this is true.
This would be top notch UX. DT lacks this. By design. Whether this a is
a good or bad thing is a different discussion.
I have my own opinion about this. I urge interested parties to watch a
talk on how developers make artists lives harder and how some companies
(the speaker works for one) are trying to abandoning this practice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ihVkVqCOGc&feature=youtu.be&t=287
This part of the talk made a lot of waves in the VFX world. The number
of mails the speaker (a friend of mine) got form renowned industry
professionals, seconding his findings, is overwhelming.
This talk also contained a section where the speaker analyses how bad
Autodesk Maya's UX is. It was cut by the sponsor, Foundry, because of
their business ties with Autodesk.
Beers,
.mm
___________________________________________________________________________
darktable developer mailing list
to unsubscribe send a mail to darktable-dev+unsubscr...@lists.darktable.org
