Playlists, Playback Queue, and other instruments of torture
Reply #15 – 2015-03-11 05:28:48
different design philosophies Excellent term, but sadly a term which most developers of software are blissfully unaware of, let alone joe/mary-soap the user. Any apparatus has a design philosophy, intentional or inadvertent. There are two basic design philosophies, the nuts and bolt behind the UI and the UI for the operator, the user only interacts with the UI and hopefully it is Intuitive and simple. I needed to reprogram my mental ram for the following in f2k; Send; it sure does send, with a vengeance, as it also OVERWRITES/Replaces everything in the playlist. All f2k noobs have had that explained to them, or they will throw hissy fits when their darling playlist suddenly vanishes because of send. I then patiently try to explain that Queue isn't displayed anywhere, and the noob grumbles and rumbles, "why is there no visual feedback as to the contents of the active AND Queued songs, and while we're here why is there no easy way to return to the active song ?" asks the noob.... I could go on forever about issues which a noob has with f2k's UI. To gauge the intuitiveness of the design philosophy of f2k's UI, look for recurring queries of UI basics in this forum. I'm no software developer but I know the phrase "design philosophy" intimately. The weakest link in any machine is the human operator, these humans are varied, some are smart others just plain dumb, some humans can re-flash their mental ram on the fly, other minds require constant formatiing and re-writing, but, the UI of the machine has to cater to all types, it's this salient fact which eludes most developers, especially in the software world. The aviation industry was FORCED to standardise their UI irrespective of Manufacturer and design philosophies because of a). loss life, lawsuits. b). It's prohibitively expensive to have crews for extended periods of time on courses, i.e. re-flashing their mental ram. Feedback of a selection whether it is visual, audio, or tactile is a must with humans, those three feedback parameters are intrinsic and vital in a UI and machine which a human will operate. The most common phrase which is uttered by a noob learning the UI of a machine is "what is it doing now". Oh, while I'm here, Humans don't like reading manuals, Manuals are like Kryptonite to a user of anything.