UI: Consistency

Cubase
,
1

Must we have – I count at least six – different styles of scrollbars everywhere?

It’s an aesthetic as well as a usability issue.

And there seems to be no consistency between flat and raised buttons and elements.

I understand the need for both, that you don’t want Ableton-style flatness, but at least have design rules that guide it.

When I have more time, I may update this post with detailed specifics, examples and some humble suggestions.

2

+1

You’d think if they were using a shared component that making changes to one would effect the others. Perhaps each department just writes a new one from scratch. :slight_smile:

3

Yeah, exactly.

I think they are getting slammed with the whole “resolution independent / touchscreen” nightmare.

Also, Cubase used to be all about the “crisp, pixel-perfect UI and fonts” and now that they can’t do that (because of res independence / high-density displays), there are some growing pains.

Add to this cross platform and now many versions of Windows and OS X to support, and I feel for them. It can’t be easy.

But still … they’re making some poor decisions on top of all that.

The need for curved edges mixed with sloppy gradients.

At least they’re keeping a dark UI, which I appreciated. Better that, than Studio One’s or Sonar’s flashlight in your face – which I’m sure they sell internally as being “high contrast” – yeah, the wrong kind of high contrast.

4

I just chime in to agree.

They need to get an overall consistency throughout :confused:

5

For starters, they should tighten up the radii of their curved corners to be much smaller and more square-like.

That way, they can have the radii for the largest component match the smallest and everything in between.

They’ve got no rules to spacing between hairlines… oh, why do I even start with this … the list is too long.

I’m happy because they’ve kept things dark and skeumorphic-y and it seems to match most of the dark UI VST plugins and meters I have open, so it works.

6

Harshness in the criticism - like in this post - is the main reason why it’s hard to get Steinberg to notice any posts. Think about it.

7

I do my best to tone down my dissatisfaction, but there are certainly things Steinberg could do to minimize user frustration a great deal like…

  1. Implement things in a consistent way, e.g., not in a (trying to think of a kinder word than “half-ass”) way.
  2. Try not to remove useful functionality when adding other functionality.
  3. Don’t ignore feature requests for a decade.
  4. Don’t use your users as unwitting beta testers. Like how can you miss that there are problems with plugins like ValhallaRoom (probably the most poplular aftermarket reverb) and Massive (regardless of what you think of it, probably the most popular soft synth)? How do you not notice that it is incredibly difficult to properly minimize Cubase to simply switch over to a browser and back on Windows?
8

I can only assume you’re referring to my “it’s hideous and a usability issue” comment?

So, I changed it to “it’s an aesthetic as well as a usability issue.”

Is that better? :smiley:

Update: I toned down my design rant in some other places, as well. I think your criticism was fair. :wink:

Btw, I’m not entirely sure there’s evidence they don’t listen to feedback. Based on what they prioritized in v8, I think they do.

9

Yeah, I didn’t mean to imply they don’t listen at all, but rather that there are elephants in the room, popular feature requests that are made year after year. It’s frustrating to get features no one asked for while many old requests continue to be ignored.

10

I’m guilty of this myself. I think we tend to conflate “doesn’t listen” (because the thing we want didn’t show up) with “didn’t have resources” to make it happen.

For example, they rewrote the entire audio engine in v8. That’s pretty ambitious and would justify a Dec 4th release, alone.

They’re clearly working insanely hard, listening, prioritizing and working in a logic, ordered way.

It’s just feels artificially slow to many of us, I think, due to the DAW competition we have now, with so many rich features in so many DAWs, where we all conveniently cherry-pick the things DAW X has that we want, that week.

11

If it was such a major effort, they could have delayed the release until they got it right.

12

…and also I’m sorry if my criticism (about the criticism being harsh) was harsh :slight_smile: I know the feeling, there are very simple things we want to have. It’s like no-brainer. But for years, we don’t get that somehow.

Sometimes I work 16 hours a day including weekends etc and I know that nobody in the Steinberg staff will use Cubase that much. There is no way a programmer will understand the way of the composer/arranger. Also a hiphop producer will see hundreds of tracks in a film composer’s project, and think “he’s doing it all wrong.”

In a post I’m trying to make a point by showing a repetitive thing I do all the time. If they implement it, Cubase will be much more fluid for me but for some reason they won’t… They don’t understand my concern.

What I mean is that people don’t understand people. And raising voices will only make things worse. Because then, people will close their ears.

I, for example, recently wrote a post telling that they’ll add the dockable mixer in 8.5 update. Then I thought, these are people and they have their lives and problems etc… and I don’t want to upset anybody… So I deleted it…

…anyway enough of me… let’s get to work :slight_smile:

13

+1 please.

Mike.

14

+1

15

+1