Comment by brudgers

3 days ago

Up and down virtual knobs are entirely unintuitive to me.

I understand the rationalization, but a knob is not a slider and what's the point of non-skeuomorphic skeuomorphism?

This approach solves a common problem in apps that need to surface a lot of controls.

Problem 1: Sliders take up a lot of space.

Problem 2: Fine control of a mouse or touch-driven interface is provided by sliding, not by rotational gestures.

The idea here is to use a virtual knob to save space, while providing the fine control possible with a sliding interface. The sliding direction is generally chosen to be intuitive to the function of the knob. (Locking to horizontal or vertical also assists with fine control.)

  • Exactly. It's not about skeuomorphism, it's about saving space. Yes, it's unintuitive, and they could have made it work with a circular swipe as well, and probably should have, but it makes sense design-wise.

  • Using a knob when using a knob doesn't solve the problem is poor design...then again, skeuomorphism is usually bad design.

    Here a counter that increases and decreases with mouse movement would take less space and be more intuitive.

    And a much much better design because it would provide a numerical readout of the value directly at the point of interaction.

    But in fairness, most design is bad because designers tend toward satisfying themselves rather than users...ok, I will stop ranting now.

    • Just flat counter fields are terrible in audio software interfaces. Sliders and knobs give you visual feedback of where you are along a line and an easy way to quickly increase/decrease speed when adjusting.

      Most software I use does still show some numeric value somewhere, either around the element when changing it, or in some other panel. This way you get some more information than in the hardware equivalent if you need more granular control. Its particularly nice if they allow you to click/double-click for editing values.

      From my perspective as a user, knobs convey exactly what I need. Mostly I don't care about the exact number, just about what position something is in. Knobs behaving like sliders is fine. I'm not physically moving a knob, I might be moving it with a mouse or touchpad. You can't stray with a physical control the way you can with a digital one. And they allow interface designers to put a lot more information on screen where space is at a premium.

      Honestly, just go download a trial version of something like Reaper or Reason and go make some music. You'll get a better feel.

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    • A counter provides more information but takes longer to read and appreciate than a simple angular magnitude.

It's a visually more compact interface element, but still allows the same simple interaction as a slider?

  • We don't steer automobiles with reins because new technologies work better with interfaces that match their technological properties. We've learned a lot about human computer interaction since the 1970's.

It's a fixed size slider which uses the rotation of the indicator to tell you its position, instead of the position of a thumb in horizontal or vertical position.

If you replaced it with text or a bar that filled the area it would be the same.

It's better than a linear sliders because it takes up less space. It's better than a bar slider because you have more range to display (the length of the arc of the indicator is longer than the horizontal and vertical dimensions). This in turn makes it better for putting into tighter spaces.

  • Your rationals don’t mention users and if you are short on space, that’s poor design — just as a 12” (300mm) bedroom door would be poor design in a dwelling.

    • By way of survivorship, every popular DAW and plugin responsible for music made over the last 30 years has made extensive use of knobs. If it's poor design that's news to the industry.

      Like if knobs suck, then every audio UI has always sucked.

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