Instrumented GIMP To Identify Usability Flaws 416
Mike writes "New users of the GIMP often become frustrated at the application's unwieldy user interface. Now Prof. Michael Terry and a group of researchers at the University of Waterloo have created ingimp, a modified version of the GIMP that collects real-time usability data in order to help the GIMP developers find and fix its usability problems. Terry recently gave a lecture about ingimp and the data it collects. During each session, ingimp records events such as document creation, window manipulation, and tool use. A log of these events is sent to the ingimp server for analysis. The project hopes to answer questions such as 'What is the typical monitor resolution of a GIMP user?' and 'Is the GIMP used primarily for photo editing or drawing?'"
representative ? (Score:4, Insightful)
About that name... (Score:3, Insightful)
But I am scared of change. (Score:3, Insightful)
Gimp needs to be surpassed (Score:5, Insightful)
I have been using Gimp for a long time. When I first installed Linux it was the only program everyone used to talk about. KDE's kolourpaint was not yet there for general purpose paint-brush replacement. I have used it for years under the hood of open-source fanboyism. And I think that is the reason why it has suffered. It had no competition, and now it is just a software which you don't want to open, again.
Now, I know it is not a paint-brush replacement. But it is neither a Photoshop replacement... and the middle land is already full of other utilities. Inkscape, Krita,
PS: posted this on journal before... this is shameless re-posting.
The main usability flaw I find (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's not that bad (Score:3, Insightful)
GIMP's Typical Use (Score:2, Insightful)
But professionals using GIMP for doing real work? That's atypical. Hopefully that will change.
Scary (Score:5, Insightful)
Want to find out what makes the GIMP ui suck? Ask the damn users! They won't exactly shy away from telling you.
I'm a Photoshop user and I have GIMP installed here to use the occasional esoteric plugin functionality. Let me tell you few things you can immediately get busy fixing:
1. for some reason GIMP developers decided every single thing needs its own window and its own menu bar. It's weird as f*ck: put the entire layout in a single window with integrated panel layout (similar to how Eclipse does it, for example).
2. each plugin is its own modeless exe dialog that takes arbitrary amount to start after it was called (at which time you can modify the processed image.. sometimes, and sometimes GIMP crashes because of it): create a proper lean plugin API and modal plugin dialog.
3. the menus and options are all over the place: there seems to be no strategy at all about what goes where
4. GIMP has really bad startup time, and performance, compared to commercial graphics editors (such as Photoshop)
5. There's no way at all to organize your layers in a more complex setup: there are no layer groups, layer folder, or anything like that. It's just a big sack of flat layers, that you can select one at a time, and link them together. This is Photoshop 4 level functionality, and most graphics editors are waaaay past that by now.
6. There are no proper drawing tools in Gimp at all. For a graphics package that claims to be targeted at geeks making icons and web devs making web designs, this is ridiculous. We're forced to fake our ways with selection tools and scripts, which covers only a fraction of what we need.
7. A personal issue I have with Gimp: no proper grid. I use the grid in Photoshop all the time, set on unobtrusive "pixel" mode, and usually at 8, 16, 32 pixels with subdivisors. In Gimp, no subdivisors, no pixel mode, and for some reason the *mere fast of displaying* the grid, makes everything slow down to a crawl.
SUV / New Coke / added armor fallacy. (Score:5, Insightful)
Looks to me like they're about to fall into the fallacy that caused Daimler-Chrysler to do a redesign of the Jeep line that killed their market.
The marketing department looked at what fraction of SUVs were actually used off-road. They came to the conclusion that it was small. So they redesigned their line to be more comfortable on-road at great cost to its off-road performance.
Turns out that a significant fraction of their market was people who NEEDED the off-road capability - and had the resources to pay for it, reliably buying cars, year after year, through all economic cycles.
Jeep stopped being the car they needed and became another clone of the rest of the market: "Mall Terrain Vehicles" that LOOK like an off-road car but are really just a funny-looking small/high van that qualifies as a "truck" to escape the fleet mileage regulations. Their guaranteed market went elsewhere and they were in head-to-head competition with a slew of vehicles over which they had no advantage.
Similarly, Coke looked at all the people buying Pepsi, saw that they were younger and that Pepsi's main difference was that it was sweeter, and replaced Coke with New Coke, which was sweeter yet. Result: People who drank Coke because they liked a less-sweet drink switched to Pepsi.
And then there was the high-ranking officer in WW II who spent months counting all the bullet holes on the returning bombers, then did a big presentation on how those areas should have armor added. At the end of his presentation a lower-ranking officer asked "Shouldn't we, instead, add more armor to those areas that are only lightly holed? After all, this sample represents only the planes that came back."
= = =
I think the same thing could happen here: Paying attention to what people do a lot of just focuses on what you're already doing right - at the cost of ignoring the things that people do occasionally, or only some people do, but which they need to have. Further, the things they do rarely may be used rarely specifically BECAUSE they're hard to use and the interface needs improvement.
Re:GIMP and Photoshop (Score:1, Insightful)
From the looks of it, it seems you are implying that GIMP is not as good in 'quality' as PS. Of course, by quality, if you meant UI, menubars, you win. If you are talking about some good mathematical algorithms applied to my pixels to modify them the way I want, I am not sure how GIMP is inferior to PS. In fact, I find it better technically then PS. And add availability of lots of scripts and plugins people are developing.
And, I have used both of it. PS at work, GIMP at home.
Fanboyism, user interfaces... (Score:5, Insightful)
That is an awful mistake for F/OSS fanboys. "Oh, it's free, so we shouldn't complain". This is like being blind to the problem. If it's free and it works, why isn't EVERYBODY using it? (In other words, why is Mozilla Firefox MUCH MORE popular than the GIMP? Think about it).
Sometimes we can forget that graphical applications are meant to be used by designers who use most of their time retouching photographs and stuff. Here, time is money. And if the lack of usability in the GIMP makes me spend 5 times more the time than I would with Photoshop (and i'm being considerate), it's just not worth switching. To put it another way, Photoshop's user interface _IS_ worth the price. I still can't believe the GIMP guys CANNOT make something as user friendly (or don't want to, which is worse). It shocks me and frustrates me.
A quote from a designer's blog [intelligentdesigns.net]:
Ooooh... what a bold statement! The GIMP is *NOT* user-focused. Don't tell me.
See, professionals don't want just "a better pile of poo" [lostgarden.com] to do their imaging work. They (and I, too) want something that IS EASY TO HANDLE. Because in graphical applications, form is function. And this is something that many programmers (at least many of those that I've discussed with) simply fail to understand.
Re:But I am scared of change. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's not that bad (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:GIMP and Photoshop (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The main usability flaw I find (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:GIMP and Photoshop (Score:3, Insightful)
The last time I used PhotoShop was on a MacII, before porting it to Windows was even considered. I've been using Gimp since the first release and never found its interface to be unusable. The Gimp is well documented and fairly easy to learn. I currently use it for my photo correction and retouching needs and it works just fine.
Like a poster mentioned above, I'm fairly sure I never could do as much with PhotoShop without spending a significant amount of time learning a new complicated piece of software. Which I'll never do because PS costs around 1000 €s in Europe and because it doesn't run in Linux anyway (which is what I happen to do my work in).
So Gimp and Krita suit me just fine (along with BibblePro and digiKam).
Re:GIMP and Photoshop (Score:3, Insightful)
1. for some reason GIMP developers decided every single thing needs its own window and its own menu bar. It's weird as f*ck: put the entire layout in a single window with integrated panel layout (similar to how Eclipse does it, for example).
2. each plugin is its own modeless exe dialog that takes arbitrary amount to start after it was called (at which time you can modify the processed image.. sometimes, and sometimes GIMP crashes because of it): create a proper lean plugin API and modal plugin dialog.
3. the menus and options are all over the place: there seems to be no strategy at all about what goes where
I find these issues to make GIMP nearly unusable. I'm always fighting with it. How do you get around these problems?
User interfaces... (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok, some questions, then. What if an interface offered approaches more consistent than Photoshop's or GIMP's? For instance, in the main toolbox, both Photoshop and GIMP mix area selection tools (eg, rect, ellipse) with tools that actually modify the image using areas (eg, smudge, fill.) Because of this, the only way to know what a tool in the tool box will do is to become familiar with it; the location (in the toolbox) doesn't define the type of functionality. What if the area selection tools were in one toolbox, and tools that modified the image were able to be placed in another - perhaps just the ones you think you'll need today? In terms of usability, this type of approach associates physical location with function; this *should*, theoretically, enhance usability.
The same thing applies to layers. Photoshop's interface treats layers like they were not images, rather, as if they were only components of images. But essentially, they are images, as demonstrated by the ability to select one and edit it as if it was the image. What if a four-layer image allowed you to see, and edit, all four layers at once, just as if they were normal images, while changes to the sum of all the layers, let's call that the "master" image, are visible in yet another window? Wouldn't that be more consistent than treating a layer as if it were something other than an image? It provides direct, and simultaneous, access to everything at once (many layers begin to bring window management into the equation, but those skills are even more basic than anything inside an image editor.)
Before you answer, I would like to point out to you how many complaints that couch themselves as usability complaints refer to an application not working "like" Photoshop, and how often the phrase "industry standard" is brought up; it seems to me that when complaints of this type are voiced, they refer to learning the person has already done, and they want *compliance*, because they already have (a set of) muscle memory that they work with. They actually don't want better or easier, because better and easier is different, and different will impede their progress while they learn (if they are even willing to learn!)
I make decisions about these precise things as part of my job; I'd be very interested in specific opinions from anyone on these issues.
Re:The awfulness of Photoshop (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:representative ? (Score:5, Insightful)
From version to version
Photoshop does NOT change locations of things very often. (V4.0 compared to V8.0(cs) does have some different locations but not many)
it's what pisses off every windows user when a new release comes out. "where did they hide function "XXXXX" this time!
After using a new version of gimp for a few days, it's as usable as Photoshop. Some people lose their mind when they have to do different things in similar apps, I dont. It's like my wife who cant drive the Ford because the wiper controls are different from the GM. I find it entertaining.
Re:representative ? (Score:4, Insightful)
So no, I don't think this is a case of selection bias - it's pretty clear to anyone who's used it that GIMP is simply the odd one out. I have quite a few other peeves with GIMP but those *do* stem from my own habits rather than the app's design flaws, so I won't comment on them.
Re:representative ? (Score:3, Insightful)
Agreed, to an extent. There are several things very wrong with the GIMP, such as layer sizes, the multiple windows, the vast amount of screen real-estate (unless you put everything into one panel like I have), the number of tools that should be merged into one, the brush sizes, needing to go through 10 dialogues just to save a png (or some format other than xcf), the transformation tools mess the image up if used more than once, the obfuscated way to add the alpha channel.
Those are just things that come to mind after just a cursory glance around the GIMP, am sure there are many more. Most of these are not problems if you know how to deal with them, but for a new user (or someone coming from Photoshop) they're annoying and counter-intuitive. That's not to say Photoshop isn't counter-intuitive in many ways, but using Photoshop as an excuse is a little like saying you didn't do your homework at school because your friend didn't: it's not going to wash with the teacher and, in the world of software, it isn't going to grow your market share (granted this is secondary, but what's the point of creating FLOSS software if no-one uses it?)
disagree with #1 (Score:2, Insightful)
If you want better window management, use a better window manager. Putting the window management features into GIMP would actually cripple the program for many of us. Photoshop's MDI is a great way to work around the limitations of the window manager in MS Windows. But it's still a kludge. A better window manager is a far better solution, and there are plenty of good solutions already available.
More details are in another comment:
http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=24
Time to wake up to the real problem (Score:2, Insightful)
The problem is that gimp programmers ignore all critism of their UI and likewise they will ignore this ridiculously complicated solution to gather user feedback.
Re:representative ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, selection bias against anyone who has ever used other computer programs, not just image editors. I don't know of many computer users who are accustomed to having a program with 12 different windows that doesn't even have a single document open.
If they want to create a new, more intuitive UI from scratch, then do it. Don't steal icons, toolbars, and palettes from Photoshop and then cry that it is unfair when people are baffled that it doesn't behave even remotely like Photoshop. There have been lots of successful image editors in the past 20 years that used different metaphors and tools and layouts and methods than Photoshop does. People don't universally complain about the horrible UI of Paint Shop Pro or iPhoto or MS Photo Editor or Lightroom or Aperture (or Photostyler or Live Picture or...).
People complain about the GIMP UI because it is a horrific example of what happens when programmers design interfaces, not because they're trained monkeys who can't operate anything but Photoshop.
Re:representative ? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:representative ? (Score:5, Insightful)
My main "this is fucking stupid" remark is the irritation at having menus for each of the little sub windows. I can handle saying "File->New" on the tool palette, if I absolutely must, but everything fucking else is just wrong, wrong, wrong. Gimp is the ONLY application that EVER does things this way; the only reason I want "Gimp to be like Photoshop" is because at least Photoshop follows the same fucking UI paradigm as the rest of the god damned operating system (or desktop environment). From my novice->intermediate usage of Linux over the years (i.e. I feel comfortable I can install and get Linux to do whatever I want, but it still takes a while sometimes), I haven't found a single fucking program that does similar things to Gimp. I'm not saying they don't exist - I'd be astonished if they didn't, but I am saying the fact that MOST don't work that way is an utterly confusing lack of consistency. If Gimp is so tightly coupled with GTK, and one would assume, Gnome is pretty tightly related to GTK, then you would THINK that consistency across Gnome applications (at least those that come bundled with the vanilla Gnome release) would be pretty in tune with each other. I've not yet seen that to be the case.
That is what irritates me. Gimp will always be an easter egg hunt for me; I only use it at work since I don't have a ripped off version of Photoshop there. I would be okay with that if the UI were at least similar to other UIs on the Gnome DE. But they're not. Not even close.
This is exacerbated even more when you consider the fact that I primarily use GIMP on Windows. I realize the GIMP is targeted primarily for Linux distributions, but to expect people to be happy with a UI paradigm that is utterly foreign to their OS of choice (whether Windows or OSX) is at best silly and ignorant.