KatsBits Community

General Category => Blog => Topic started by: kat on October 04, 2013, 12:28:33 AM

Title: Blender User Interface design - change for the sake of change
Post by: kat on October 04, 2013, 12:28:33 AM
There's a lot of discussion in the Blender community at the moment about changing, or rather "improving", the User Interface to make it more, well... user friendly. Much of it seems pretty subjective and most is wholly absent of context. In other words, discussion seems more akin to changing the interface because it can be changed, and doing so in ways that, whilst they make sens to the user, don't with respect to the way Blender actually works as an application (and needless to say the amount or recoding that might be required for what might very well be subjective improvements).

Anywho.. the clip below always comes to mind when reading such topics.. from Jabberwocky (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jabberwocky-DVD-Michael-Palin/dp/B00007LZ5A/) it shows Dennis "the stock-taker!" causing chaos in an armorers workshop by thinking if he moves a table a couple of inches to one side it would increase the workman's efficiency. It doesn't of course because Dennis doesn't take into account the workman's reflex efficiency developed over years of use.

The moral of the story shouldn't be lost on the reader/viewer, there's a lot more to consider here than simply re-quoting interface design philosophies (absent specific context); some deep-seated notions need to be addressed first, not to mention answering whether Blender Institute should risk a change of the magnitude being suggesting in some quarters - that's a lot of time, energy and effort that could be otherwise better spent.

Title: Re: Blender User Interface design - change for the sake of change
Post by: ratty redemption on October 04, 2013, 01:05:33 AM
interesting, although personally i still report ui bugs in the current design that thankfully are getting fixed, and that design has been around since about 2.5x so god knows how long it would take them to fix all the bugs if they implemented a major redesign.
Title: Re: Blender User Interface design - change for the sake of change
Post by: kat on October 04, 2013, 01:20:37 AM
The difference is you're reporting bugs (or omissions) that need to be fixed rather than suggested something subjectively that might not fix anything ;) We should definitely encourage the former. Unfortunately the community as a whole seems so very easily distracted by the latter. $0.02 cents