So I've recently been playing on Xbone and... (Off-Topic)

by Kahzgul, Monday, March 12, 2018, 17:09 (2236 days ago) @ Korny

That vid was so true. I feel like there's been a big move in the last (10? 15?) years of software design to just throw out the "design" portion of the job title and start changing shit just to make it "feel new." Remember when iTunes changed it's logo from blue to red? Now it's BOTH because fuck being able to quickly recognize and identify the icons for the apps you use. But that's minor. At the same time they changed the color, they also moved the browser bar from the right side of the screen to the left and removed the ability to easily create and nest folders. They made "purchased" a category, which is a weird way to browse your music library

"Gee, honey, hip hop is nice and all, but I only listen to music from the genre 'purchased digitally from the itunes store' - do you have any of that?"

What the fuck?

All of which leads me to the clusterfuck of nonsense that is Avid Media Composer (get ready for a very inside-baseball rant that won't make any sense to most of you). That's the editing software that I use every day of my sad, godforsaken life. It was also apparently created in the same way as Freddy Krueger, except instead of being raped by 1000 maniacs, Avid's mom was turned into ransomware by 1000 engineers. This is a terrible metaphor. Whatever. My point is, when you have a nearly completely customizable UI, HOW THE FUCK IS IT STILL IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND THINGS? Like, I can put almost every instruction wherever I want it on the screen or bound to my keyboard, but - for reasons beyond my ken - certain settings are locked behind bizzare sub-menus and can't be moved. You want to find Offline items in your bin? No, no, you can't keybind that. You have to go to Bin > Select > Offline Items. At least the bin menu makes sense, because you're doing something in your bin. But what if you want to export an EDL of that same bin? DON'T GO TO THE DAMN BIN MENU, THAT WOULD MAKE TOO MUCH SENSE. Now you have to go to Tools > List Tool and then generate the EDL from there. Last gen of Avid you actually had a thing called "EDL Manager" which was its own application. Too bad, bucko, now we call it the "list tool" - no one knows why! And god forbid you might want to change the default 4k conversion settings of your project from "Stretch" to "Center Punch" BECAUSE YOU CAN'T CHANGE THE DEFAULT BEHAVIOR. So if you're importing, say, 3,600 hours of source footage from the field for what would be a moderately sized month-long shoot, you need to remember to change each and every clip manually. And of course you can't keybind that!

Software engineers of the world, Please, PLEASE, for the love of God, make sure there's a professional UI designer on your team and that he has read and LOVED The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman. That's the UI bible right there. And then do whatever the UI designer says.

I did some UI work once upon a time, and it is hard work that is grossly under-appreciated.