An Honest Critique of Aeon's New Menu System

Tex Pepper · Post by **Tex Pepper** » Wed Oct 31, 2012 3:33 am

Greetings All,

As much as I like Aeon (and I like it a *lot*), I must say that the new 'Theme' menus are not intuitive in the slightest. Quite honestly, the plugin behaves almost as if it were 'fighting back.'

I design user interfaces for a living and one handy measure of whether the UI is fulfilling its design goals is how easily the user can..well..use it *without* consulting documentation. (Aeon's documentation? It does exist somewhere, I hope? Something beyond that 'canvas' bit?)

Witness the iPod. Nobody reads the manual because *nobody needs to*. The interface is intuitive and lends itself to experimentation that helps the user build a mental model of how everything relates to everything else, and quickly, too. A simple interface, yet you can do so much with it and you can bet its creators put a lot of time into its design. Aeon's interface? Nearly opaque. And those Themes? I really hate to say this, but in User Interface terms, they're a disaster. Truly.

I do really like this program a great deal, and I don't mean to sound critical, but please do something to make those Themes easier to make sense of, easier to use, clear and intuitive. Apart from the menu system and, especially, the way those Themes work (somebody understands them, yes?), Aeon would be an absolute gem of a program. It's nearly there already.

-Tex

Post by **BTT** » Wed Oct 31, 2012 2:03 pm

Hello Tex Pepper

As the staff at SoundSpectrum rarely visit the forum I have sent a copy of your post to the SoundSpectrum office.

Regards BTT

DireWolf · Post by **DireWolf** » Fri Dec 28, 2012 5:37 pm

Last night when I was making a custom theme so that I could remove the sakura branch preset I sorta felt the same way. One thing that would help is when you are choosing what scenes you want it would be nice if it had a pic next to it or gave you the ability to start it right there and then check it if you want it or not. That way you dont have to go back and forth from the active scenes to edit categories menus. You could simply cycle through them check what you want. Same goes for the color map's menu's.

Honestly though there's only 4 scenes I dislike and was able to do the job once I realized that I also have to select what color maps I wanted.

Post by **BTT** » Fri Dec 28, 2012 6:02 pm

Hello All

juxtiphi wrote:Also I think a good way to make customizing Aeon super easy would to be this,

Have a menu window with a box containing icons for each scene. Then you have a line next to that box that you can drag the scene icons of your choice onto and make a chain. Then under each icon you could have a small window which allows you to set the duration in minutes for each scene. This seems much easier than scripting because you can literally see what you will have made and would encourage the user to get more creative with each chain they create.

http://www.soundspectrum-forums.com/vie ... php?t=7662

Regards BTT