02-04-2024, 01:11 AM
Hi, after using AEMS for a day, trying to find my way around I stumbled over a few things related to usability that I think are worth mentioning as they might contain some insight about how a new user navigates the app.
These are obviously personal observations, and while there might be explanations for some of my issues in the documentation, I think seeing this from the perspective of intuitive interactions/expectations can be valuable. So, here‘s the list in no particular order (scrollable):
These are obviously personal observations, and while there might be explanations for some of my issues in the documentation, I think seeing this from the perspective of intuitive interactions/expectations can be valuable. So, here‘s the list in no particular order (scrollable):
Code:
-Two-finger zooming sometimes locks to the opposite axis when not exactly aligned with one at the start.
-Zooming out on a small/short audio clip makes it so it is not editable anymore, as the 3-dot menu is not accessible/visible anymore and that seems to be the only way to access the clip editing options menu. (Many actions should probably be available via some other interaction mechanism aswell like (two-Finger/)double tap, (two-finger/)hold or something similar like a popup button)
-tap-dragging on the top timeline bar only sets the playhead to the tapped position, instead of continuing to drag it (it requires precisely ‚grabbing‘ the playhead to actually be able to drag it), which is unintuitive.
-Snapping a very small oneshot audio clip via the grid to around a single bar can make the clip get stuck in a non-resizable state. Only deactivating grid snapping helps in getting it unstuck.
-Some soundfont entries, like bright grand sound different in preview (smoother) than in use (harsher).
-Resizing drum tracks is only possible in both ways at the same time, when trying to fit a certain range in view by shrinking, the instrument labels can become very tiny to unreadable.
-Exiting subviews via „next“ seems unintuitive, semantically
-zooming in into a section smaller than a second makes it so that no time information labels are visible on the top timeline bar. It would help If that dynamically adapted to sub-second precision.
-dragging the view/focus via the bottom overview bar also changes the playhead position, this unexpected and in most cases not even desired as it’s a less precise way of achieving the same via tapping the top timeline bar and from a ux perspective it signals only changing the view/focus (as in many similar apps).
-yellow FX-grid „power“ button signals to be a toggle (allowing to turn off the fx), but it’s not.
-Drum-editor allows selecting instrument labels (they become highlighted) but this doesn’t lead to the intuitively expected preview audio playing, instead previewing the sound only seems to be possible by actually placing a note.
-Real-time editing of notes while in play-mode seems to not update the audio output immediately (instead the new/changed note is played only after the subsequent re-run)
-in play-Mode it doesn’t seem to be possible to move around clips (and I think a few other actions), which makes quick spontaneous adjustments require unnecessary stop-adjust-play-repeat interactions.
-with for example 3 tracks, that span less than the full height, it‘s possible to still scroll upwards, hiding two track lanes in the process for no apparent benefit, but slight confusion where these might have gone if scrolled accidentally (happens a bit to often), as there seems to also be no vertical scroll position indicator.
-tapping the record button again could also allow stopping a running recording instead of just the stop button.
-for instrument tracks that the instrument button has two different behaviors depending on the side it’s clicked on is not visible enough (enter piano roll & select instrument)
-arming an instrument track immediately jumps into piano roll, which might not always be desired. this could be an optional setting.
-the more button popup also contains ‚preferences‘ which is the same as the ‚settings‘ button already visible in the main top bar.