Tool Set not very intelligent

[dieterhaller]

Software all in all is a very good alternative, but the usability lacks somehow. Some Tools are just not to find easily and tutorials are not the best... The persona thing is not helpful and terms and wording is not common... 

So where is the pencil and what the hell is STUDIO hidden somewhere under submenu?

[Joachim_L]

Not very informative.

35 minutes ago, dieterhaller said:

but the usability lacks somehow

Where specifically?

36 minutes ago, dieterhaller said:

Some Tools are just not to find easily

Which tools?

36 minutes ago, dieterhaller said:

tutorials are not the best

What is missing? There are lots of tutorials to find in the extra section here: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/forum/9-tutorials-serif-and-customer-created-tutorials/

37 minutes ago, dieterhaller said:

The persona thing is not helpful

Which persona and what is not helpful with the Persona?

38 minutes ago, dieterhaller said:

terms and wording is not common

Examples? Maybe your terms and wording could make the product better?

39 minutes ago, dieterhaller said:

So where is the pencil

Maybe I should have asked before: What application are you using?

40 minutes ago, dieterhaller said:

what the hell is STUDIO hidden somewhere under submenu?

Yeah, first question I can answer. With Studio you can show / hide various panels (having various functions). Have you ever played with the application? Tested different things? I doubt it.

[CLC]

2 hours ago, Joachim_L said:

2 hours ago, dieterhaller said:

what the hell is STUDIO hidden somewhere under submenu?

Yeah, first question I can answer. With Studio you can show / hide various panels (having various functions). Have you ever played with the application? Tested different things? I doubt it. 

You misunderstand his point.

UX-wise, having such frequently used menu hidden under another submenu is an ux fail.
There should be a "Studio" menu in the top menu hierarchy.
Navigating to View > Studio > Subitem constantly is time consuming and not really very good ux.

[CLC]

2 hours ago, Joachim_L said:

3 hours ago, dieterhaller said:

Some Tools are just not to find easily 

Which tools? 

Ie: Designer and Corner Tool that's not visible by default and you have to go to View > Customize Tools to drag and drop it in the toolbar to be able to use it.

[Joachim_L]

First off: He is vague in his writing. Second: Which application is he using? Designer? How do you know it is so? Maybe Publisher which has no Corner Tool. Third: He wrote "What the hell is STUDIO ..." and not "Why the hell is STUDIO hidden ...".

Don't want to sound disrespectful here, but if he wants help, he has to write a bit more what is wrong in the application(s).

[CLC]

I get it. English might not be his first language (same here) so maybe a bit of patience would help there.

Despite being vague, he's got a point.

20 hours ago, Joachim_L said:

21 hours ago, dieterhaller said:

terms and wording is not common

Examples? Maybe your terms and wording could make the product better?

Paths (that is a standard term in this industry, not just Adobe) vs. Curves is one of the examples.

20 hours ago, Joachim_L said:

21 hours ago, dieterhaller said:

tutorials are not the best

What is missing? There are lots of tutorials to find in the extra section here: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/forum/9-tutorials-serif-and-customer-created-tutorials/

I have to disagree, imo, the Tutorials are quite awesome.

20 hours ago, Joachim_L said:

21 hours ago, dieterhaller said:

So where is the pencil

Maybe I should have asked before: What application are you using?

He might be using Pixel Persona in Designer where the Pencil isn't present in the toolbox.
To some users, the whole toolbar switching / persona concept is quite alien and confusing indeed.

20 hours ago, Joachim_L said:

21 hours ago, dieterhaller said:

Some Tools are just not to find easily

Which tools?

Power Duplicate is also one of the examples.

Take care.

 

[R C-R]

18 hours ago, CLC said:

You misunderstand his point.

UX-wise, having such frequently used menu hidden under another submenu is an ux fail.
There should be a "Studio" menu in the top menu hierarchy.
Navigating to View > Studio > Subitem constantly is time consuming and not really very good ux.

Even if the OP's comment was about where the Studio menu items are placed (which seems at least a bit dubious), why do you think it has to be so frequently accessed?

Studio panels can be organized unto tabbed panel groups so there is no need to close whichever ones you use most frequently. They can be floated, singly or in tabbed groups. If they take up too much of the workspace to keep visible all the time, double-clicking on a panel name header will collapse it to just the header, which can be positioned anywhere on the screen, & then popped open with a single click on the header. Each persona can have it own studio panel layout, & on Macs different ones for normal & separated window mode. It is also possible to toggle the visibility of all Studio panels on & off, & to assign a keyboard shortcut to do that.

That said, I do think it would be convenient to have a separate Studio menu, but the problem with that is some windows or displays are not wide enough to include all the separate top level menus we might like, so placing some items in submenus is unavoidable if they are to remain accessible in all configurations.

42 minutes ago, CLC said:

Paths (that is a standard term in this industry, not just Adobe) vs. Curves is one of the examples.

Every vector object has a path but not all vector objects are curves. The Affinity apps include 19 vector shapes that can be converted to curves but that does not make any of them the same thing as a curve. The naming conventions in the Layers panel take this difference into account.

1 hour ago, CLC said:

To some users, the whole toolbar switching / persona concept is quite alien and confusing indeed.

Likewise, to some users an overly cluttered UI is quite confusing, particularly one that includes items that can't be used in some contexts & are (or should be) greyed out in those contexts.

[CLC]

48 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Even if the OP's comment was about where the Studio menu items are placed (which seems at least a bit dubious), why do you think it has to be so frequently accessed? 

Studio panels can be organized unto tabbed panel groups so there is no need to close whichever ones you use most frequently. They can be floated, singly or in tabbed groups. If they take up too much of the workspace to keep visible all the time, double-clicking on a panel name header will collapse it to just the header, which can be positioned anywhere on the screen, & then popped open with a single click on the header. Each persona can have it own studio panel layout, & on Macs different ones for normal & separated window mode. It is also possible to toggle the visibility of all Studio panels on & off, & to assign a keyboard shortcut to do that. 

There are left and right studios and when you have smaller screen size, this is far from ideal.

Say when you move pages studio from left Studio panel to the right, even when you collapse most of the panels, it gets too filled and you have to scroll within the panels in most cases.

I myself access it very frequently so I'm one of the users who would benefit from having to go less steps. But I'm not starting a feature request, tbh since I feel it's moot to try to request anything here, observing how feature requests like Select by... or Offset Path are treated (yeah, I know, I know... Small dev team, limited resources, roadmap, been there, seen all that and I understand...)

You can turn visibility of Studio Panels on and off indeed. But you can't hide only left or right studio panel, only both of them together.

The whole concept of Studio panels is nice, however it's simply inconvenient, time consuming and slow to dive into the submenus every time you need to show/hide a panel.

Every single ux designer will tell you that confronting an user with less steps is always better than adding more steps in the way.
This is exactly the case.

48 minutes ago, R C-R said:

That said, I do think it would be convenient to have a separate Studio menu, but the problem with that is some windows or displays are not wide enough to include all the separate top level menus we might like, so placing some items in submenus is unavoidable if they are to remain accessible in all configurations.

Well, see the toolbars - even on a 1280px (not that lowres) wide display you have to use the triangle to display such an important setting as Column Setup (in Publisher), while the main menu takes about 50% of the whole area they could use at the moment. Even less in Designer and and around 60% in Photo. See attached screenshots.
So this shouldn't be a problem. And it's all Studio Link, right? Would actually make sense to have this menu one level up in the root menu structure.
Just my 5 cents.

[markw]

12 minutes ago, CLC said:

But you can't hide only left or right studio panel, only both of them together.

I'm going to have to disagree here. I have Shift< to hide the Left Studio & Shift> to hide the Right Studio setup in all three Affinity apps.

[R C-R]

3 minutes ago, CLC said:

Say when you move pages studio from left Studio panel to the right, even when you collapse most of the panels, it gets too filled and you have to scroll within the panels in most cases.

Try floating a panel or tabbed panel group instead of docking it on the left or right. This is where double-clicking on the header to collapse it is most useful to avoid having to constantly open & close Studio panels.

9 minutes ago, CLC said:

But you can't hide only left or right studio panel, only both of them together.

Actually, in the Mac versions you can hide them individually, but even if you can't do that on the Windows ones, combined with all the other possible Studio panel configuration options, the UI is adaptable to almost any screen size & workflow anyone needs.

[CLC]

2 minutes ago, markw said:

I'm going to have to disagree here. I have Shift< to hide the Left Studio & Shift> to hide the Right Studio setup in all three Affinity apps. 

Thanks.

I have no such option in the Studio menu. All I see is Hide Studio.
And I'm not diving in the settings to change shortcuts since I would have to do that all the time, for all three apps, on both my Macs and both my PCs. If it's hidden just there, how should a standard user know it's there? I didn't, up until you mentioned this.

 

[CLC]

1 minute ago, R C-R said:

Try floating a panel or tabbed panel group instead of docking it on the left or right. This is where double-clicking on the header to collapse it is most useful to avoid having to constantly open & close Studio panels. 

I have 1280 x 1024 px screen. I don't have screen real estate to float a panel group here.
In Publisher, when Left and Right Studio is open, the actual real estate for document itself is so tiny I can't do anything.

[CLC]

Just now, PaulEC said:

I think how this works depends whether you have Windows or MAC!

I have both PC and Mac. And all Affinity apps for both of them.
Mostly working on the Windows PC though since I use my Macbook Pros on the road.

[R C-R]

1 minute ago, CLC said:

I have 1280 x 1024 px screen. I don't have screen real estate to float a panel group here.

Try floating one or a few individual panels, & double-clicking on their name headers to collapse them when you don't need to access them. Or do the same thing with a single tabbed group. I don't know what your typical workflows are like so I can't suggest anything specific but I often work with more than one app open side by side at the same time on my 2560 x 1440 iMac screen, so it is not unusual for me to devote less than ½ the screen width to an Affinity app. The 'float + collapse' options work well for this so I'm a bit puzzled why it would not do the same for you.

[markw]

18 minutes ago, CLC said:

And I'm not diving in the settings to change shortcuts since I would have to do that all the time, for all three apps

Ah, yes the whole Mac v Windows UI/UX differences thing, and I note that the original poster didn’t state which OS he is working on.
I find it surprising though that hiding the individual Studios can’t be done on Windows.
The key combo’s I set weren’t being used by any other actions in any of the apps so I didn’t have to reassign any of the default key commands. And it dose only need to be setup the once.

[CLC]

3 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Try floating one or a few individual panels, & double-clicking on their name headers to collapse them when you don't need to access them. Or do the same thing with a single tabbed group. I don't know what your typical workflows are like so I can't suggest anything specific but I often work with more than one app open side by side at the same time on my 2560 x 1440 iMac screen, so it is not unusual for me to devote less than ½ the screen width to an Affinity app. The 'float + collapse' options work well for this so I'm a bit puzzled why it would not do the same for you.

Thank you for the suggestion. As you can see in the screenshot I posted before (quoting it below - see the floating Glyph Browser and Text Frame Studio panels in the top right corner of the page...) I'm already doing that, but it's sadly not really applicable for such huge panels as Pages :{

35 minutes ago, CLC said:

 

[R C-R]

28 minutes ago, CLC said:

And I'm not diving in the settings to change shortcuts since I would have to do that all the time, for all three apps, on both my Macs and both my PCs.

Why would you have to do that all the time? I just use the Mac versions, but once I have set the keyboard shortcuts to what I want, I change any of them infrequently, if ever. There are only two Macs here, but since it is easy to save & load the keyboard shortcuts on a per app & per user basis, it is no big deal to keep them the same on both Macs, or for that matter to switch between different sets to see which one(s) I or the other user likes best.

14 minutes ago, CLC said:

Thank you for the suggestion. As you can see in the screenshot I posted before (quoting it below - see the floating Glyph Browser and Text Frame Studio panels in the top right corner of the page...) I'm already doing that, but it's sadly not really applicable for such huge panels as Pages :{

For the really large panels there will never be enough screen space to show all their contents at once, regardless of how large (or how many) displays you have to work with. There is nothing any UX designer can do to avoid that. Features like auto-scroll & a choice of icon/thumbnail sizes can sometimes be used to minimize the inconvenience but nothing can make it go away entirely.

[Bad_Wolf]

Why not the possibility to add a "Studio" icon on the toolbar, or give the option to put a "Studio" icon on the toolbar (customize toolbar).?

I am using a 15.4" screen laptop and have room enough in the menubar to add a "Studio" menu. I find the suggestions I read on this topic interesting and worthwhile to investigate at least. Addin a "Studio" menu will increase productivity for sure.

Chris