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Figuring out a DAW for ipad - The central design language. (Looking at the new Logic and others)
This post is about the UX design of DAWs. I post it here because this is where people who design DAWs hang out.
You kinda need to know a bit about these fields of design for this to make sense. Feel free to ask if anything is unclear, or point out such things.
This is written from a user perspective, and from an outsider-designer perspective. I don't have the inside view on how these apps are made, so I hope that you read this with the understanding that I approach the matter with some humility.
My primary road-block to creativity in DAWs on iPad is the fact that it’s quite hard to orient yourself in them. To find the thing you need. Without tearing your hair out.
Or to look at it from another perspective, it seems like when DAWs are designed for iPad, often they seem to have stranded on these rocky shores: there are no ready-made tropes of intuitive design do fall back on.
This is why I was very excited to try out Logic Pro for iPad, Apple’s excursion into this area, on their home turf.
Please note, friends of Logic, embattled as you are, beset on all sides by the brainless hordes of us Ableton fanbois/girls/birls, this is not a review of the merits of Logic. It's not about that at all. I promise. I'm sure it's great.
Anyway. Here we go.
The DAW, I think in every format I can think of, has a through-line of a central menu, and a command bar of some sort.
My DAW of choice, Ableton, has both up top;
The apple top menu is such an ubiquitous feature that its easy to forget how much it affects ease of use. Ableton makes sparse but wise use of it, and has the command bar at the top.
Bitwig skips the apple menu altogether, which does make it a bit harder to navigate, since you need to scan the entire screen to seek out what you need. It has a strong command bar at the top, and folds a lot of its menu under the top-left File menu button.
Reaper uses the OS file menu, and while the command bar is not up top, the visual tropes make it obvious and immediate
These two things are both backbone and crutch. No matter the medium, hardware or desktop software, you want immediacy, you want to avoid menu-diving.
And you want the user to be able to stumble upon as much of the functionality as possible.
It seems that the most easily approachable DAW-like programs on iPad seem to fall back on design tropes from other mediums. GrooveRider and similar apps emulate drum machines, groove-boxes and tabletop samplers. These apps, like their models, use most of the screen dedicated to static interface that you can train your muscle memory, plus a part (often a square) for a menu.
On the other end, you have something like Korg Gadget, simplified desktop-daw design tropes, with some limitations to cut down complexity.
Other apps will let the paradigm (the touchscreen with its options and limitations) define what the product will become, but those apps, if successful, never reach full daw.
The most exciting idea borne of this is AUM and it’s cohorts, like the OG, Audiobus. The modular DAW. While it solves some problems to pick and chose your components, sequencer and such, it creates new ones. By using windows, which is not something that fits the touchscreen format well, it takes little to create clutter, and you lose the ability to use touch friendly methods like swipe gestures to navigate between parts of the interface you build there. And piecing together “your” studio becomes tougher, I still haven’t found the sequencer that balances enough complexity and ease of use for me to find flow in. I’m not even sure that the desktop sequencer paradigm/design can be ported to touchscreen. Often the interface is too fiddly even for pen use on the largest iPad.
Logic Pro for iPad was a bit of a disappointment for me. Design-wise. This is probably for the same reason as why movie adaptations of books will always disappoint one of two groups; the old-head book readers, or those new to the story.
Logic Pro for iPad somewhat understandably maintains its design cues from desktop, to serve Logic users.
In the choice between new users and old, this design chooses the old users. It's the secure choice, and up to a point, it's the only way forward unless a very firm decision would be made. And it goes with what I assume is what the Logic team all knows and understands.
And in this environment, I spent and hour or two figuring out how set the shuffle/swing amount. It’s a small detail of course, but it illustrates the problem I have with so many of the more innovative, or ported DAWs on ipad - that the interface is scattered, because that was what worked on desktop.
But this is also a considerable, marked let-down.
Because this is Apple.
Apple of the design standards, design manuals, design language. The company that pre-designs app templates to create cohesion of muscle memory. Even with an OS filled with apps from a wide assortment of developers. The absolute leader in this. From the start.
Here's an example of how Apple's Human Interface Guidelines can work:
Glyphs, the font design app, is a cherished child of the apple design standard, for those of us in graphic and type design. Designing fonts is inherently complicated, but glyphs managed a breakthrough, by fitting as much of the core features into the standard apple layout as they could, and relegating the rest to menu and context menu. A good design standard gave them a skeleton to build on, something to help them through an arduous, thorough design-process.
It’s market predecessor, FontLab 5, looked like many of the old-school engineering programs, filled with cryptic icon buttons and cluttered menus.
By simplifying the interface, Glyph simplified the work, opening up Type Design to more graphic designers. And the competitor, FontLab, hired the developer of Glyphs to consult on modernizing the FontLab interface.
The iPad guidelines are not nearly as strong, and there are no common interface elements that could serve this same purpose. And even sadder, I haven't seen it discussed much.
I have some ideas. These are meant to start the discussion, rather than to define the ending. Or, if the discussion has been going on elsewhere, to invite myself in.
I’m attending Sónar in Barcelona currently, so I’m not gonna illustrate my thoughts until next week, I think, but I can describe this in words now:
I envision a unified interface of menu and context menu. Ideally at the top. The user expects things like BPM to be at the top. Often the bottom is used, but the user often rests hands there, but the view of the top of the screen is always in clear view. So it's the obvious place to fit the most commonly used options, both universal or contextual.
To conserve screen real estate, you'd have a visual cue for drag-me-down. A tab, or something like it. You want the user to notice and to try it out. A small strip, like some have now, which expands, and contracts, with user gestures. Simple, cohesive. Obvious in function and use.
When you look for something that you cant do with a button or other gizmo in the main viewport, you look there first.
And then, you put more obscure options - all of them - in something like a long-press contextual menu. Designed not to be annoying. Obvs.
But as I say, it’s not a given that these exact tropes should be used. My main message is that a cohesive common design language should be built up, as iPad grows and prospers.
I’m a bit disappointed that Apple hasn’t come further in this. Maybe they face obstacles I don’t see. But while this is the situation, it’s up to the development community and its power-users to figure these things out.
I'm a big fan of many of the developers here, so I'm excited to have a discussion, if that happens.
I look forward to hear your thoughts.
Sveinbjörn / Terrordisco
Comments
You can’t compair Glyphs with Logic Pro when it’s about the amount of functions in the app.
Apple has made an first version to iPad, it’s not perfect when checking the GUI, but, it’s a wonderful DAW if you really dig deep into manual videos and to use it for weeks…
the fastest GUI on the platform, that isnt an emulation of non-touch desktop DAW, is FL Studio Mobile. My opinion. Look at some user Youtube’s and see if you agree
Pretty impressed that ImageLine still develop FL Studio Mobile after all this years - bought it myself 2011 but really never used it much…
Why do you default to a position of "don't attack Apple". Relax, they don't need your protection. Here is a thoughtful consideration or beginning of a consideration at least, of user interface and user experience, and I for one would be happy to read an indepth chapter all about.
Yeah I also find FL on iOS is pretty nice to use, actually a far more pleasant experience than attempting to use FL on desktop
Thanks to machine learning and Internet-roaming bots, we may never know.
FLSM has a very straitght forward, touch oriented workflow.
It compares way more to using Ableton Live than desktop FL
I wish Bitwig 5 was on iPad just as is. 12.9 M2 plus pencil and I would be in joy. No need any auv3, just stock but of course not against either 😄
ah that's a damn shame, i hadn't clocked that.
I think I'll have to rewrite this post and re-post it, since it didn't make sense to anyone here. That's on me.
I mentioned Glyphs as an example of how cohesive design language helps app design and development in general. I don't think this text reads well to those who aren't familiar with the history of apple's design language thingy. Sorry I wasn't more clear there.
Shitting on Logic is absolutely not my point. This isn't a review, it's meant as a discussion for those interested in the design and building of these apps. I do not comment on the merits of Logic, or any other DAW.
Spending weeks on evaluating a DAW is absolutely the core of the problem I describe. Good UX design is about cutting that time down, drastically. Cumulatively I've wasted months finding a working iPad setup.
I have yet to try it. I guess I have to now!
Thank you! Maybe a discussion could be warranted.
Uh, thanks? I don't think I was advertising anything though? That's usually a tell-tale sign.
Does it trigger alarms that I structure my thoughts as an article? Usually GPT text is super easy to read, but incredibly boring.
But duly noted though, Intro isn't clear.
For what it's worth I thought your post was excellent. I can't see how anyone thought it was produced by ChatGpt. Keep posting!
Hahah lol oh well. My bad. Thanks for clarifying!
I was a bit unsure when posting this, it's a bit of a long one, and I didn't know how to prefix it so the reader would know what it was about.
I updated the intro anyway with context and shitty jokes about Logic users (based on one comment from one guy, no offense meant)
100%, which i'm guessing is also why you had a somewhat conversational (researcher-as-blogger-esque) tone, and didn't expect to heavily police/edit every single expression, as if a viva was going to occur, where typing is thinking, and invites responses to that thinking.
elsewhere on the forum your topic is touched upon with @dendy who is a dev and @Gavinski and many others with interesting perspectives on the UI and UX of these things but perhaps expressed only in passing,
so yes, interested to hear more. your post connected to ways of thinking and evoked jef raskin and the apple stuff, bill buxton at that rival place
, donald norman, your namesake bjorn's book push turn move, the jensenius book, d'errico's book, the NIME stuff, muller-brockmann, john maeda and ACG, yugo nakamura, don't make me think guy, etc.
there is surely a lot that is profound about what we are doing, what has emerged, on these extremely usable rectangles of responsive glass that we've all chosen to make music with. and i haven't seen very much at all that speaks in depth about this exact thing (music software design for touch screens whether iOS or otherwise) and connects interestingly with tangential disciplines. an occasional chapter or paper, ok yes, not lots though.
Do share links if you can!
I know like half of these, and I've read less than half of that 🙃
I'm a bit of a hack when it comes to UX, i've read tons of articles and have quite a bit of basic experience, but my main thing is type design and typography, that's where I focus study. But I'm gonna drill through that list, see what I need to check out.
It's very central to the growth of the medium, but possibly something that everyone important is too busy to deal with.
oh yeah the puritanical usability dude
, ah he kind of gets on my manboobs though i do know it obviously matters, and he's at least half right half the time 
, interesting that he was a collaborator with donald norman, and similarly norman years afer the influential design of everyday things text, finally stopped being a stick in the mud with the follow up, emotional design. i don't think nielsen has ever crossed over in to flirtations with whimsy and experimentation like that. he's that religious dude in the chocolat movie who will never give in, until one day he will. one day nielsen will gorge on chocolate. that's possibly a whole other topic to yours but also fascinating as a flip, the reason why music making apps like spacecraft or animoog are so brilliant to play with and perhaps is a point that the longer history of interactive art is now a mainstream phenomenon in the form of such ipad apps. two different sides that do converge in some apps.
I never really gave nielsen much attention. Around the turn of the century he was the butt of many of our jokes at a web design company I worked at, his dogged persistence that hyperlinks should be blue and so on sounded pretty pretty dreadful to our 20 year old ears.
But I think about him as a figure as I'm getting older, and I've learned to respect where he was coming from, if not where he tended to end up.
But he's still more of a meme mention, really.
yeah, i get that, there's a baby in the nielsen bath water for sure. not to be thrown out.
you can move command bar on top... REAPER is most configurable DAW ever made, you can adjust UI very much ... there is even abailable tons of beautifull skins..
To conserve screen real estate, you'd have a visual cue for drag-me-down. A tab, or something like it. You want the user to notice and to try it out. A small strip, like some have now, which expands, and contracts, with user gestures. Simple, cohesive. Obvious in function and use.
This. Very much agree. This ia made perfectly in NS:
even after years the simplicity yet amount of features imprinted to this UI still amazes me how easily i was able to build muscle memory for most of functions..
yes, huge disappointment for me
Basically apps should be easy to use without RTFM but there needs to be some defined conventions agreed upon to make this more universal. Is that about right?
Are we voting on the User perspective and hoping Devs impliment our recommendations? Sort of a UI/UX standard? It would be nice…
I still think NS2 is the king of this aspect, although I would love to see Reaper ported to iPad. Any DAW can become familiar with enough hours invested, so there will always be fans of Logic from laptop that are fans of it on iPad. Although the positive comments were drowned out by lack of audio tracks complaints, most people commented positively on the UI/UX in NS2. At least one app has stolen much from NS2’s aestheic, so maybe it should be looked at for what makes it so intuitive and used as a starting point for developing a Universal UI/UX Standard (UUIUXS) [joke].