[PD] PD usability

mark mark at junklight.com
Wed Feb 12 23:59:41 CET 2003


If it where me that wanted to make PD more "producty" (technical 
term that :-) - and its not -  I already have enough joy with this 
at work with users/support/testing/load testing/a development
team/a dept. head/etc. - Then I would try to establish a small group
of volunteers to do the work. I am sure the rest of the community 
would support such an effort if it didn't mean much work on their 
part. 

The key areas I see as being vital are;

installer - not always an easy job 'cos of the platform thing (and the 
quality of the tools). As a guide I have had a team member put in 
about 6 man months over the last two years on our installer. 

Config - midi/audio selection would have to be a preferences
dialog for the more casual user. I guess this would have implications
on how PD starts up too. 

GUI - you can argue its fine until you are blue in the face - people 
are used to and expect pretty interfaces - if you want
minimalist/functional
then it needs to be *designer* minimalist functional (think Peter
Saville/factory
records). Its just the way it goes.

Docs - there needs to be a reference manual. Again you can argue 
about it all you like - not having one means that the beginner has to 
do a lot more work to get into the product. 

Support - who is going to provide support to people. What happens when
the mailing list is full of people going - "it does't work on my
pc..why?" or
"I NEED feature X..why can't you make it do that"

Don't get me wrong - PD is just great as it is as far as I am concerned
- what 
I am talking about is making it accessible to a wider audience. It 
will grow larger as time goes by and by having a high level of knowledge
needed for entry we make life easier for ourselves.

Again - not trying to pour water on ideas but if you want to make PD 
accessible to a wider audience you need to consider what is involved

cheers 

mark 



> -----Original Message-----
> From: pd-list-admin at iem.kug.ac.at 
> [mailto:pd-list-admin at iem.kug.ac.at] On Behalf Of Marc Lavallée
> Sent: 12 February 2003 22:37
> To: 'pd-list'
> Subject: RE: [PD] PD usability
> 
> 
> Le mer 12/02/2003 à 16:59, mark a écrit :
> 
> > Sorry to be blunt about this but I did say I had my day job hat on. 
> > :-)
> 
> I actually resigned from a well paid job in a university 
> center because I was unable to bring artists to use free 
> software and be more responsible. I had to manage a bunch of 
> projects, buy computers and softwares, and program "art". It 
> was a stupid and impossible mandate, because artists 
> (especially students) must do their own stuff, not always 
> rely on programmers to hold the mouse for them. Of course, 
> most artists were asking for Macs/Max/MSP/Jitter, leaving 
> little money for anything else, including humain brain juice.
> 
> So for me, a "better" PD would have been cool. I won't accept 
> such a job unless artists agrees to change their tools and 
> their attitude toward technology. But we need to help them a 
> little bit, or I might never work with them again.
> 
> --
> Marc
> 
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