Comment by lostgame | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lostgame | Hacker News Reader

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>> It is not "objectively god awful".

That is, like, your, very rare, by my objective consensus, opinion, man.

Honestly. Blender’s existence is a miracle. That it can exist at all, or has a serious user base compared to its commercial alternatives is baffling at best. I praise each and every one of the clearly dedicated developers who make it happen, and just because the following is true does certainly not mean I do not fully respect every ounce of effort that goes into it.

Prior to this one, minor change, the UI/UX is actually one I display to my students (I teach UI/UX design on the side) as the single worst design in software history. The mouse click being one of the first of literally dozens of examples of undoing basic behaviour I’ve seen, practically ever.

Case in point: I have seen at least a dozen of my students visibly cringe when they see the default UI/UX operations.

Blender’s back-end is incredible. To call it’s front end a disaster would be far too high praise for it. It’s not awful, you’re right. It’s arguably the worst design in recent software history.

In fact, I’d urge you to show me a worse-laid-out piece of widely-used software, so I may use it as the example instead.

I couldn't help but shake my head as I read your comment.

Almost every single paragraph you wrote stems from your personal opinion. Not a single claim you made was substantiated by any sort of supporting data. Have you even preformed studies beyond "I don't like it and saw some students dislike it"? Have you studied how proficient users use it? As it stands, your comment is a long winded complaint that blender's interface design doesn't conform to your personal tastes.

I, like GP, think Blender's interface is excellent given what it enables. The interface is consistently designed and well thought-out (mostly). The vast functionality of what blender can do is never one or two keystrokes away thanks to pan focus. Information is also grouped consistently and laid out clearly and logically. Pans allow you to easily arrange and rearrange your workspace according to the task at hand. Even menus and controls are (or can be) laid out clearly instead of being hidden deep somewhere because authors thought they wouldn't be used frequently. The interface was designed for serious long term users. It was not designed for casual or one-off users.

I just hope you are also as eager to teach your students about interface design requirements inherent to heavily-used complex software as you are to share your objective opinions.

I couldn't help but shake my head as I read yours. I've objectively said that this doesn't stem from my personal opinion, but that of my students, as well. Which immediately invalidates your first point. I've explicitly expressed, this is not my opinion. It's that of many, many others. I certainly don't just show my students all the things to do wrong, as is the case with Blender's UI/UX.

While it may have it's own merits, none of which I've personally had the benefit of experience, I'd argue encouraging certainly some of the most counter-intuitive UI/UX behaviour from the outset is certainly a great way to isolate any initial potential users.

That's not my opinion. It's a whole ton of folks opinion who happen to disagree with you.

And yes, I love to show my students complex, yet well-laid-out software like Logic Pro X or Final Cut X, which are usable to the casual user, yet offer a profound amount of control over highly technical aspects, while retaining a simplicity, expectability, and reasonable nature of a user experience. Logic and Final Cut are what I would call 'extremely well-designed yet highly technical' pieces of software.

Blender's UI/UX is absolutely, almost inarguably from a fundamental design perspective, compared every other piece of software I use in my work flow, that is inexcusable. There's no other word for it. Any amount of forethought into it's basic UI/UX operations would result in a better piece of software.

As much as I support FOSS, I'd pay for 3DS Max or Maya in half a second, because even as convoluted as their UI/UX is - at least they actually seem to understand there's a human being who is using it at the end of the day.

> That's not my opinion. It's a whole ton of folks opinion who happen to disagree with you.

And a whole ton of folks do (see blender's userbase growth). Anecdotal evidence is just that, anecdotal.

Unless you support your assertions with some sort of objective measure, your assertions are subjective by definition, and will remain so regardless of how many time you insist on it being otherwise.

> As much as I support FOSS, I'd pay for 3DS Max or Maya in half a second, because even as convoluted as their UI/UX is - at least they actually seem to understand there's a human being who is using it at the end of the day.

Funny you say that, because Blender's user interface is also designed for humans :o)

I'm curious, what specifically about blender's interface irritates you so much? Perhaps there might be something to merit such passionate hate.

>> Blender's user interface is also designed for humans :o)

Now that, I fail to believe.

These gripes of yours seem to be based on using old versions of Blender. Did you try Blender 2.8? It has an all-new UI.

Once you get the hotkey driven workflow and the, personally amazing, non-overlapping windows it's super fast to use. I'm much faster of an artist in Blender than 3ds Max or Maya. I do admit that it took awhile to learn, but since I've been using Blender which is since before they went open-source, I became accustomed to some of it's unique features.

I will admit somethings are horrible in the UI, like a hotkey available but not a menu item. Or the Keyframe Type being in the Timeline but only viewable in the Dopesheet. (I argued with the developer to no avail.) But the idea of the interface, with non overlapping windows just works.

Think of the blender ui as an "Engelbartian" design. It requires training but should enable better results once the user is proficient.

http://www.loper-os.org/?p=861

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