Re: User Experience Engineering

[Joshua Koo]

Hi,

I have no say in Lilypond development, but I do have similar thoughts I would 
like to share (well as maybe a more bias windows user).

Perhaps what some of us imagined before tried using Lilypond was that you just 
have to do a few clicking, and out comes the score. That was what I thought, 
and it was a initial shock for me that lilypond looks like programming with a 
syntax to learn, and "painstaking" just to enter notes, for such lazy and slow, 
mouse-addicted typist.

If after all the purpose of lilypond is produce beautiful scores, why cant the 
input be visual? I dont have the answer. For me, if I wanted to compose, in my 
mind would be thinking where the notes on the score for entry, rather than what 
are the pitch names.

For example, take 3d modelling/rendering software. I do appreciate the beauty 
of pov-ray rendered images, but it seems to me very painstaking to type the 
syntax, coordinates and everything just to generate each image. Could you 
imagine how if its used create a 3d movie? But I believe there are a couple of 
good frontends for it. If you have seen any relatively experienced user work in 
3ds max (or maya, lightwave, blender3d..), its really like the mouse becomes a 
hand in the computer, and moulding 3d models from blocks like how pots are 
moulded from clay.

In the meanwhile, I'm trying how I can enter notes visually in LilyTool, sort 
like a frontend, you click stuff on a staff and it inserts a extract of 
lilypond code maybe, but then I not too good at programming either.

Till then, take your pick on the wide choices of score setting software, and 
even if still chose lilypond at the end, you can find the converters (abc, 
midi,musicxml, nwc.. ) or many others which can produce lilypond files 
(lilypad, gscore, denemo, noteedit, rosegarden, harmony assistance..), and 
issnt that the unix philosophy?

Joshua

>Message: 6
>Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 15:54:48 -0500 (EST)
>From: "Linda Seltzer" <address@hidden>
>Subject: User Experience Engineering
>To: address@hidden
>Message-ID:
>       <address@hidden>
>Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1
>
>Dear Friends,
>
>Having previously worked at AT&T Labs, where I was a member of the User
>Experience Forum, I would like to make a few comments as a relative
>outsider seeing the Lilypond project for the first time.  This is a great
>endeavor and the software output is beautiful.
>
>I would greatly encourage the project to focus on the user interface and
>the user experience if this is to catch on in a large way.
>
>Having to install separate editors (and who knows what bugs that will
>bring and what other mailing lists one will have to subscribe to...) or
>get into the system with DOS commands, and to understand what is wrong if
>the flags are wrong, etc. does not constitute user interface engineering.
>
>A smooth user interface employing the standard already-debugged platforms,
>such as Notepad and Word on Windows, with everything bug free, is more
>important than more and more detailed features, which can be added later.
>
>Every 10 minues spent system administrating and installing things is 10
>minutes that real work doesn't get accomplished.
>
>User experience engineering is just as important as other areas of
>software development.
>
>Sincerely,
>Linda Seltzer
>
>