[karatestomp]

The other day I was using MusicBrainz Picard and it occurred to me just how absolutely pleasant it is. It uses standard desktop widgets, is fast, has some nice attention to detail and consistently accurately relates the state of things, is powerful, and stays out of your way. It—and this is #1-with-a-bullet more important than every other UX concern—behaves consistently.

I don’t think it would survive a pass from most “UX” folks in such a nice state. It 1000% wouldn’t survive a designer or hybrid designer/UX person (it wouldn’t look pretty in screenshots on their portfolio).

The main problems in software tools are lack of consistent behavior, lies, and tons of ways to use a bunch of tools that all do basically the same thing (and you’ll probably have to know more than one). The hardest part’s not using them, exactly, it’s knowing all the different, stupid reasons they break. It’s a general quality issue more than a broader UX thing, I think. That extends to libraries. And I don’t also mean tools and libs from big names—I mostly mean them.