I came here to say the same. My son (10) uses it a lot, he's figured it all out by just trying things.

The other day he had an issue with a slight echo in the audio. He mentioned it when we were out of the house. When we got home I had the idea that maybe he'd added the Audio Input Capture twice ... but I couldn't think of why that would happen.

When i mentioned it to him, he'd already figured it out and solved it. He had added two audio inputs when he was trying to capture his headset mic and his desktop mic (with phone taped to it, playing music) ... I dunno what the point of this story is ... OBS has a weird interface, but it reminds me of the good old days, when you just made it work and the users just figured it out.

I think the polished UI/UX we have these days makes us complacent. Afraid of poking and prodding.

I think "polished" UX usually requires a dumbed down interface and is otherwise exceedingly difficult for necessarily complex workflows such as broadcasting.

If your product isn't quite opinionated on the one right way to do things (and only a specific kind of thing) you can create a really shiny UX. If your product needs to be many things to many kinds of people, stuff ends up a bit messy but only to the detriment to extreme beginners.

The first comparison that comes into mind is old.Reddit vs new Reddit

If that's what polishing is please leave OBS all smudged and gross haha

I adamantly disagree.

The problem is explained in...

Design for the Novice, Configure for the Pro

https://bothsidesofthetable.com/design-for-the-novice-config...

We need to find a way to better integrate UI/UX designers into open source.

We have actually just launched a user survey[1] today hoping to get some feedback about how people use OBS, with the goal of improving UX. No telemetry makes it difficult to get an idea of which features users actually use or find important.

[1] https://obsproject.com/survey

> No telemetry makes it difficult to get an idea of which features users actually use or find important.

Beyond the survey, are there usage logs we can share or limited telemetry we can opt into?

Nothing else at the moment, even as opt-in. We're considering this in the future, but want to make sure we do it right.

> but want to make sure we do it right.

Make sure you do it differently than how Muse Group did it with Audacity (specifically the announcement and explanation of why and what parts) [0]. Which I'd argue is not particularly difficult to do.

[0]: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/07/no-open-source-audac...

Personally, if there is telemetry added, I'd prefer it to be plugin.

I'd love it if you guys pinched inspiration from the middle alignment lines from whatever streamlabs calls itself these days (lines that extend to the edge of the scene when moving elements so you can more easily eyeball where things should go, snapping to other element edges/middles is a bonus). Literally the only thing I missed switching out slobs for OBS.

Love OBS, everyone involved in it should legitimately feel proud of their work. Great software.

E: Survey done :)

I would love for this to happen. I’m no designer, but I enjoy thinking about design and tinkering in Figma. The reasons I don’t try to help on this front are because (a) I’m not a professional, (b) I doubt anyone appreciates a drive-by “design upgrade” without data pointing to why it would be better, and (c) I rarely have deep enough context into the application to make more than superficial helpful changes.

By the way, as a community we should look at the changes Blender landed in 2.8, which were (I think) considered a major UI/UX redesign that increased accessibility to the broader public.

There might be an issue with the view that non-programmers have of contributing to open-source.

My sample size of 1 is a friend who is a professional UX designer. Once, I tried convincing them to help with some OS project, but the response was "that sounds like work, and I don't work for free".

Which has a point, I guess. Open Source contributors have normalized pouring countless hours for free into their projects (when not paid by a commercial entity). But outside of this bubble, I guess people don't see it with the same eyes. Even though in the end, it benefits everyone.

It just requires (semi?)professional knowledge to write good code, like it takes professional knowledge to write good UX, so "why would anyone do that unpaid". Maybe makes sense in the spirit of an artist who gives their art for free, but not in the mindset of a professional who charges good $$$ for an hour of work.

EDIT: Typos and unfinished phrases.

It's difficult to get pros to donate work. Even when they do, the work they do can be ... less than perfect ...

In the project that I developed, and turned over to a new team, we finally (after about ten years) got someone who is a professional UX manager/developer to step up, and he's been doing an awesome job.

In my case, my personal motivations run deep. I do a "better than pro" job on all my open source. I'm a passably decent designer and UX guy, so that helps.

first time i showed my wife calibre (she had to convert some amazon ebook format to epub), she was scared. so many buttons, so many labels, so many options. nothing makes sense unless you understand the developer that did it.

I'm normally one who vastly prefers function over form and UIs that get out of the way of someone who knows what they're doing instead of catering _strictly_ to the use cases of the lowest common denominator.

But even I think the Calibre UI is pretty awful.

This is why we need more design expertise in FOSS. Your form/function dichotomy is incorrect.

You have software domain knowledge and experience working with spaghetti interfaces assembled by developers rather than designed by experts. You find them more functional because it fits your existing mental model of an interface. However, these interfaces are vastly less functional to everyone else.

An interface that only facilitates beginner workflows is poorly designed. I rarely see these in the wild, but the culprits are usually non-designers pantomiming their understanding of ‘designed’.

I do, however, regularly see developers misinterpret interfaces designed to facilitate advanced functionality for non-developers. Focused views with controls and readouts obscured as appropriate, but functionality exposed through key shortcuts or other means are what most people expect, and it’s a whole lot easier for a developer to learn those usage models than for non-developer users to learn how to use a hundred buttons and readouts acting as a thin wrapper around an API.

> This is why we need more design expertise in FOSS.

The secret probably is having well defined roles: whoever writes the code shouldn't be involved in interface design and vice versa, unless they prove themselves good at it, as the two tasks require very different sets of skills. This is easily accomplished in commercial software writing where roles are defined and salaries paid, but in the FOSS world where everyone and their cat want to be the famous developer, the UI designer role is rarely recognized for its importance.

And the main barrier to design work being integrated into FOSS is usually the attitude of project maintainers. I know plenty of designers who’ve worked as developers and all of them contribute to FOSS… just not as designers. The attitude of the post to which I responded is a perfect example of it— the way developers do it is the advanced way to do it but designers just want to make the Tonka version for idiots. It doesn’t fly in commercial software but FOSS is fun for a lot of developers specifically because they don’t have to listen to a project manager telling them to make it pixel perfect just like the designer asked. And hey — it’s their Project and they can do with it what they will, but it rubs me the wrong way to see those same people blaming users for struggling with their “advanced” interface and scoffing at the utility of experts and their work.

There’s definitely some utility in separating roles— as an experienced designer and developer I can assure you that making the right design decision is a lot harder if it’s going to be a pain in the ass for you to code — but the most important factor is having the right expertise for the task. We’ve all seen the cargo culted loopdy loop code written by non-experts armed with tutorials, and having one of them do the design and one do the coding won’t work out any better. Same thing with devs and UI work. Design is a wholly different skill set that requires study and practice.

While I'm sort of rephrasing what DrewADesign said, I think, it's not a matter of "form over function" as much as the difference between a UI designed around the tasks to be done versus one designed around the underlying data/function models. The latter can be very "functional," but that doesn't necessarily make it a good interface.

Calibre's UI isn't illogical or nonsensical, and it can do everything you probably want when it comes to managing an ebook library, converting between book formats, and taking files and off ebook readers. But it doesn't feel like anyone involved with the UI design ever really thought about it from the perspective of "how do I make the common tasks easy" rather than "how do I ensure all the functionality is exposed".

I think the classic design phrase "form follows function" best describes the ideal.

That is, when designing something, and especially when there's nothing to yet dictate what the form should be, let function guide you to it.

If you were to ask "how should a table lamp be designed", I would point to its function -- to give diffuse light and allow switching it on and off -- as the primary guide. Make that work well. Don't let the form get a life of its own that will distract from the function. Rather, the form should serve the function and make it beautiful.

Please don't.

I’ve always compared it to Audacity (though not quite as crash prone/unwieldy haha). Mostly because it’s 1) free and 2) far more robust than it has any right to be.

I’ve been in media production for about a decade. You’d be surprised how many high budget projects use OBS for live streams. It really does get the job done.