JemmyOpen Source has a UX problem. Here's how we can fix it.
Gardiner Bryanthttps://subscribeto.me/videos/watch/6a413d9e-38b3-4522-aadf-52713aa290fe
Truthfully, Free Software is a philosophy concerned with software development and the rights of the end user and that’s it. It has nothing to do with the economic model that drives its development. So what’s the problem?
Read this video as an article: https://gardinerbryant.com/free-software-has-a-ux-problem/
https://www.howtogeek.com/please-stop-lowering-your-standards-for-open-source-software/
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About Gardiner Bryant: A native Maine resident, Gardiner (yes, that’s his first name) is an enthusiastic Linux evangelist, a believer in the efficacy and superiority of the Free and Open Source way, and President of Heavy Element. Heavy Element offers web design, media production, and YouTube consulting services to individuals and companies in Maine and beyond.
Gardiner Bryant is a privacy advocate and public speaker on the topic. Learn more about his speaking series and schedule an engagement at your institution at https://gardinerbryant.com
00:00 The inciting incident 01:51 What does UX actually mean? 02:22 Free software has a User Experience problem… 03:36 “Free Software Developers” 05:24 RE: Sydney Butler 08:11 The one example Butler actually gave… 10:22 Redmond Design 11:48 Audacity is one of the true FOSS UX success stories 12:38 Three ways to improve FOSS UX 13:39 #2 Usage Statistics 15:54 #3 Your contributions 18:31 Conclusion
Licence: Attribution - Non Commercial - No Derivatives
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@gbryant I had a conversation about "how bad UX" in "the Fediverse" & "Linux" is, just a few days ago. Basically my take was that, even if space for improvement, it's not that bad and I prefer it over what I have on Windows. Also there are many thinks like "federation" and "the freedom of choice" that improve the UX for me in important ways but are also creating problems that platforms avoiding such things never face.
You bring up a very important point. There is not one "FOSS" project.
@gbryant I agree that overall there's a need to having good UX in the FLOSS community, and I actually think FLOSS punches well above its weight for good UX. Most software tends to have familiar UX due to being first to the solution rather the best. In contrast, FLOSS tends to have scalable UX that also changes with time to become more powerful. Blender is a great example of this.
Specifically though, I think Audacity is not a great case study. Firstly, as Tantacrul and the Audacity crew themselves say: Audacity is not a DAW, and the entire value of Audacity is that it's not a DAW. You can download and "do a thing with audio that you want to do". It's closer in use case to Sound Recorder on steroids than a DAW. Given that and the way the feature set has expanded, it's only a matter of time before the jank & technical debt sets in (which leads, in turn, into design debt). This also affects big companies, and often these companies cannot escape (you can look at the way the new Mac UX has been received, and a huge proportion of that is design debt coming from technical debt).
Secondly, and this is a big one, Tantacrul is not just an amazing designer, he's an amazing designer *for music software*. You could probably count on your hands the number of people on the planet who could fix audacity the way he is doing. Pick even an average to good designer, and Audacity IMO would go from bad to worse. See how cars are being designed today to see what the average designer would do to a UX.
Thirdly, Audacity is specialist software, and this requires a whole different mindset to "regular" design. I just don't think regular designers are capable of it. Expecting an improvement in that sort of software is asking for a lot. Like imagine saying that something like KiCad needs improvement? I dunno.
@gbryant
I did click the link, I would never get my 15 minutes back (I switched to 1.75x mid-way)
Can I get at least a link to the original article on Discord?
@elbci @gbryant gardinerbryant.com/free-softwa it's in the description of the video
@gbryant read your article, coming from the gamedev side, directly testing with end user(often irl) is deeply integrated into my workflow.
and maybe for this reason, godot engine gui has really good ux(and documentation, oh god, goals). for an example, in version 4 they added "advanced" toggle in project settings. oh how i desperately want this toggle in every gui software XD
@gbryant without Telemetry you can Not make Tour Software better? Thats the supidist thing I have ever heard. Also you can not really See the Problems that Users habe. About #Audacity: I think the core UI really never changed. The best Software ist Software who ist used by the programmers like Blender and Inkscape.
I do not think it is the only way, but it is a very objective one, because numbers don't lie. not all problems will be visible, only those that you are looking for. Imagine a feature veing unused because it is hidden or does not work. would you investigate a root cause if it always worked on your machine? maybe there are no bug reports, but a 0 usage counter on the thing you were working on for half a year. that would be quite helpful
@gbryant It might be me, but I've noticed in a few of your last videos that the audio has a slight delay compared to your lips. Again, as I'm the only one reporting this, it might be my computer, but I thouht I'd let you know.
I think Audacity is the perfect example of why this has not been deemed important. Audacity has been used by countless people over the years despite the UX problems. Instead time and resources have been put into porting to different platforms, keeping up with OS changes and improving features and stability.
If they had tried to so as many UX changes as Windows or Apple then that would have been less resources added to the core functions or need a much bigger team. For me the thing with FOSS is not that it has to be as good as the competition always. I believe it will get there in the end, if we all keep trying.
I see the move to FLOSS, and I do believe we will all eventually be using FLOSS because you can't beat free on price, but I see it as a marathon not a sprint. The UX can be fixed in the start of the race for some and in the last 100m for others.
That said, common UX standards and best practices are of course welcome and will come in time. All we can do is try and help speed up the process and call out anything that set it back.
Hehe OpenSource has a UX problem? My girlfriend has Windows on her desktop and her keyboard doesn't work in some menus, like this:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/4067463/the-keyboard-cannot-type-in-the-start-menu-how-can
Also, like:
https://www.techradar.com/computing/windows/windows-11-bug-breaks-the-entire-desktop-but-luckily-theres-a-fix
I think we're doing fine in comparison :)