Skeuomorphism

i'm messing about with coding graphical user interfaces for audio software, VSTs in particular, and i'm noticing that most of the programming tools for creating interfaces are geared to realism and emulation of old hardware gear: they provide you with code and templates for 3D-rendered knobs with colored caps, sliders that look like hardware sliders out of an analog mixer, clumsy big "jog wheels".

basically all relics from when analog gear had no better means of control than the cheap and plentiful knob/slider/swiitch.

imo, in software most of these are just a waste of space. turning a virtual knob is usually not the efficient way to change a parameter value.

it's not eyecandy to have a VSTi with virtual wooden sides and airvents that are 400px wide. why do so many people like this fake hardware.

turns out there's a term for it, skeumorphism,

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A skeuomorph is a physical ornament or design on an object copied from a form of the object when made from another material or by other techniques.

further down i find:

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Arguments for skeuomorphism in digital design

The arguments in favor of skeuomorphic design are that it makes it
easier for those familiar with the original device to use the digital
emulation, and that it is visually appealing. Interactions with computer
devices are purely cultural and learned, so once a process is learned
in society, it is difficult to remove. Norman describes this process as a
form of cultural heritage.^[6]

Arguments against skeuomorphism in digital design

The arguments against skeuomorphic design are that skeuomorphic
interface elements use metaphors that are more difficult to operate and
take up more screen space than standard interface elements; that this
breaks operating system interface design standards; that it causes an
inconsistent look and feel between applications;^[13]
that skeuomorphic interface elements rarely incorporate numeric input
or feedback for accurately setting a value; that many users may have no
experience with the original device being emulated; and that
skeuomorphic design limits creativity by grounding the experience to
physical counterparts.^[14]

another big -1 for me would be the extra effort of designing the fake-hardware-look although some other people would count that as a plus cos it gives them a job.

so oh watmmers, what controls should i put in my plugins?

i blame Reason's success:

i don't personally hate skeumorphic stuff, i'm sure it has it's place, but in general doing so without very good reason looks dumb and can often be distracting.

There's an article in this month's Scientific American (and EOS in Benelux) about this. Even Apple seems to be moving away from their skeuomorphic design.

I'd agree that we don't need skeuomorphy. It lowers the barrier for entry, but is generally a waste of UI space, clarity and efficiency. A knob or slider on your UI can be helpful to make the interface mouse or touch enabled and to communicate a valid or sane range for a value though.

I'm not that into it either and I think in 10 years or so it's going to look incredibly dated and embarrassingly blatant about its intent. That said I do understand the need to help society get over the mindset of, and feelings associated with, acquiring and using hardware tools. In other words, not to be too weird-looking and scare them from consuming the software. Now that I think we're mostly there, we can start thinking of more pragmatic ways to use screen space. Some plugins have already started doing this, like Aalto, although functionally it's not much different from skeumorphic knobs.

am I wrong in thinking that a lot of the added graphics contributes strongly to cpu usage? because on my old computer when I ran no-frills analog emulators it was fine, but the newer ones with all the fancy grafix would cause my shit to crash.

keywords here are "culturally inherited" and "visually appealing"

i feel bad when a synth I use doesn't look like the way a synth should

I dunno, Rebirth 338 is just about as skeumorphic as it gets (does it still count as skeumorphism when it's an emulation?) and that ran fine on my dad's 486dx in 1997. That said, execution efficiency was the top priority for coders back then, and now that computers are so much faster that's not as important.

  On 2/2/2013 at 4:46 PM, chimera slot mom said:

keywords here are "culturally inherited" and "visually appealing"

 

i feel bad when a synth I use doesn't look like the way a synth should

Sure, it's just nostalgic baggage, though. I guess with synths it's different because the interface should help you get in a certain mood or flow. So looking sexy is actually kind of important.

I never skip an opportunity to bitch about the vst plugin skeumorphism plague. Plugins with popping 3D knobs and shiny handles or rackmount screws/empty screw holes etc tend to break my DAW's 4th wall, kind of like if you were trying to do a crossword puzzle and someone across the table starts chewing corn flakes with their mouth open.

I deleted a lot of plugins I really love the sound of because looking at them drains my inspiration and conviction. There are definitely enough minimal UI and GUI-less plugs to cover most of my basic needs and custom Reaktor shit will do the rest so I'm not really too bothered in the end.

I really like the idea of gui-less plugins. It makes a lot of sense to me to have the host handle rendering of controls and let the plugin just be a simple input/output processing device. In practice, though, GUI-less plugins are crappier on average than others, and the DAW usually ends up using some kind of virtual knob or slider to represent the parameters.

I think most of the non-gui plugs are freeware which naturally means they might not be as fully featured as well furnished looking plugs but when compared to other freeware I find the non-gui stuff on average to be more academic in quality. In the plugin world you see lots of fancy graphics covering up standard DSP code.

the midi controllers are still very knob/slider based afaik, so i think it makes sense for vsts to emulate controller's hardware look to some degree. that reason screenshot is disgusting indeed though.

Hardware emulation in software was very interesting and novel in the 90s and 00s, but I think we've reached some kind of plateau with it. Not that more things aren't going to be emulated in software, but just about everything in hardware has some software equivalent now, even things like modular control voltage I/O and super high quality EQs and reverbs. So emulation is not as exciting or interesting anymore - I think most people even find it bland at this point. There's probably a space in the market now for truly innovative and unique designs.

At the same time there's been a pretty steady and solid resurgence in modular technology. And the hardware synth market, both old/used and new, is still quite healthy, so it's clear that computers are not completely replacing hardware. The only things that have really suffered (that I can think of) are things like dismal rackmount synth and effect units with obtuse interfaces. Also rack samplers, which in some cases is a shame since the Ensoniqs, E-Mus and Kurzweils had unique sounds and features that software is still catching up with.

So I think what we're seeing now is what I see as a healthier and more robust best of both worlds kind of approach, where hardware and software are complementary, and software doesn't necessarily have to emulate or replace hardware. This is a pretty fertile environment for new control paradigms that are both more pragmatic and attractive than skeumorphy.

That said, I think it will be the norm for a while still.

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so oh watmmers, what controls should i put in my plugins?

What kind of plugin are you building son, vst or vsti? Be sure to pass me a alpha, beta! ;)

not much love for novelty graphics here hmm.. i thought blinkenlights even ran for Most IDM one year? well then,

yes, i reckon that for some instruments or effects the most control variety will be on the hardware (controller) end, and that the GUI would then only be needed for initial settings and to set up the hardware controller. but for other instruments or effects there are (currently) only few hardware controllers that make sense.

Djeroek i'm building with binaural HRTFs now, and have been playing with different kind of reverberation for some time (gathered a big stash of algorithms), + yer everyday spectral scrambling, perhaps :sup: i'm trying to put something together in VST vorm,, cool would be to have a openGL interface with visual representation of what the HRTFs and reverb do spatially.

I think the world would be a better place if all software controls were sliders. Buzz and Renoise have it right, with sliders that also accept keyboard entry for precise adjustment. Software emulations of knobs piss me off most of the time. Especially the ones that require dragging the mouse in a circle in order to adjust them

  On 2/5/2013 at 11:28 PM, modey said:

I think the world would be a better place if all software controls were sliders. Buzz and Renoise have it right, with sliders that also accept keyboard entry for precise adjustment. Software emulations of knobs piss me off most of the time. Especially the ones that require dragging the mouse in a circle in order to adjust them

If you have plugins with circular knob dragging make sure and check your hosts preferences to see if they can disable that. Reaper definitely lets you override plugin drag mode for whatever you prefer.

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Djeroek i'm building with binaural HRTFs now, and

have been playing with different kind of reverberation for some time

(gathered a big stash of algorithms), + yer everyday spectral

scrambling, perhaps :sup: i'm trying to put something together in VST

vorm,, cool would be to have a openGL interface with visual

representation of what the HRTFs and reverb do spatially.

Nice! Figured you'd dive in spatial matter, maybe start out with a simple slider gui before getting over ambitious on visual candy? The few hrtf based vst I've seen let you position speakers around a dummy head, what are you thinking about?

skeuomorphism probably triggers the uncanny valley in autistic people or something

autism probably triggers the skeumorphism in uncanny valley people or something

  On 2/5/2013 at 11:53 PM, Djeroek said:

 

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Djeroek i'm building with binaural HRTFs now, and

have been playing with different kind of reverberation for some time

(gathered a big stash of algorithms), + yer everyday spectral

scrambling, perhaps :sup: i'm trying to put something together in VST

vorm,, cool would be to have a openGL interface with visual

representation of what the HRTFs and reverb do spatially.

 

Nice! Figured you'd dive in spatial matter, maybe start out with a simple slider gui before getting over ambitious on visual candy? The few hrtf based vst I've seen let you position speakers around a dummy head, what are you thinking about?

true.dat , i'm not using ANY gui for my dlls now (so it defaults to the VST host, like simple sliders in cubase, but that gets unmanagable fast), only trying out the different libraries/toolkits.

i'm doing this kinda phaser-type thing where each delay line is convolved with a different hrtf. the delay lines are modulated with sines like a regular phaser but i want to have different waveshapes for that, maybe user-specified/imported/drawn. i have no way to load different hrtfs while the plugin is running, they are hardcoded, but that should chnge too. having the hrtf change dynamically, realtime, thru some sort of 3D listener/source interface like you mention is probably not in the cards; i've seen software that does that, 3d-rendered virtual-space-interfaces are pretty skeumorph.

you might wanna check this project out http://synthmaker.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11616 could be worth downloading the synthmaker demo to poke around. its quite effective

and here is a HRTF reverb project in reaktor http://co.native-instruments.com/index.php?id=userlibrary&type=0&ulbr=1&plview=detail&patchid=5320

Wouldn't it make sense for a musicians software to resemble their hardware? Especially, because in the past they would be moving from using hardware to software and a recognizable environment would make that transition easier and faster. I think it is also beneficial because people using Reason can gain some knowledge of how they would be interacting with hardware if they were using it or plan to use it in the future.

hey. here is an interesting article about gui in general. Thought it would be on-topic

http://www.nngroup.com/articles/anti-mac-interface/

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|=====================|========================|

| Mac | Anti-Mac |

|=====================|========================|

| Metaphors | Reality |

| Direct Manipulation | Delegation |

| See and Point | Describe and Command |

| Consistency | Diversity |

| WYSIWYG | Represent Meaning |

| User Control | Shared Control |

| Feedback and Dialog | System Handles Details |

| Forgiveness | Model User Actions |

| Aesthetic Integrity | Graphic Variety |

| Modelessness | Richer Cues |

|=====================|========================|

Table 1. The Mac and Anti-Mac design principles.

  On 2/6/2013 at 3:06 AM, RadarJammer said:

you might wanna check this project out http://synthmaker.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11616 could be worth downloading the synthmaker demo to poke around. its quite effective

 

and here is a HRTF reverb project in reaktor http://co.native-instruments.com/index.php?id=userlibrary&type=0&ulbr=1&plview=detail&patchid=5320

"synthmaker" that's cool software, i think it is called "FlowStone" now. it's fast, like synthedit, and there's lot of gui options. not as powerful as max or supercollider but still a cool sketch-tool. not using any middleware now tho, i'm coding in c++, and also i've been writing in FAUST which is pretty fkin awesome for a higher-level language.

  On 2/6/2013 at 10:58 AM, Babar said:

hey. here is an interesting article about gui in general. Thought it would be on-topic

http://www.nngroup.com/articles/anti-mac-interface/

 

 

kewl, dates from 1996 though

  On 2/6/2013 at 8:58 AM, AdieuErsatzEnnui said:

Wouldn't it make sense for a musicians software to resemble their hardware?

Wouldn't it make sense for musicians hardware to resemble their software?