Despite being amazing applications, Gimp and Inkscape receive these complaints a lot - and so did Blender until recently.
I think one category of complaints leveled against the UI/UX is these projects is that they are "fine". They are good enough to get real work done. And if you're fine with fine, then the objections seem needlessly nit-picky... and they are!
But these apps are for creative projects - you open them up to do creative work. It's certainly possible to do creative work in a "fine" environment, but it's a lot more enjoyable in an environment that sparks joy (tm).
The Blender transformation has been incredible: it went from "fine" to "sparks joy" despite the fact it's a massively complex behemoth. Sometimes I open Blender just because it makes me happy to see the UI. Open it up, extrude and scale a cube a bit, and close it. Ahh.
For me Aesprite (pixel editor), Ableton Live (music workstation), and Pico-8 (game maker) have the same feeling. It's just fun to work with the tool for anything... and double-y fun when you're working on something fun: it compounds the enjoyment.
When I first used Sketch when I was on Mac I had that feeling too. Going back to Inkscape after that was "fine". I really like Inkscape. It's my go-to vector editor, does everything I need, and I'm very grateful it exists. But I'd never open it up just to feel happy. I'd love to see it magically do a Blender.
>The Blender transformation has been incredible: it went from "fine" to "sparks joy" despite the fact it's a massively complex behemoth. Sometimes I open Blender just because it makes me happy to see the UI! Open it up, extrude and scale a cube a bit and close it. Ahh.
I usually reference Blender circa early 2000s as one of the worst UIs not intentionally designed to be bad I've encountered. I'd say it had steps more like "gah", "bleh", "usable", "ok", "fine." I haven't used it in awhile but I imagine its light-years ahead of what I recall.
GIMP as long as I can remember has been "ok." It lacked streamlined features available in Photoshop and most complaints for the UI were basically centered around "why isn't this Photoshop."
Unless there are significant workload improvements, no one likes to learn a new UI when ultimately they just want to get their current work done. Software is a tool for most people and UI designers should always keep that in mind before making drastic changes/"improvements."
The first shot compares it to 2.79, which is descended from the 2.50 redesign in 2009.
I just fired it up for the first time in a while (got a 3D printer!) and have had to relearn a bit, but I'm a fan overall.
Not shown in those screenshots, it now defaults to left-click selection! Significant muscle memory to retrain for that, but it's nice to have it match every other piece of software I've ever used.
Blenders ui is amazing. It lays out complex UIs and controls beautifully. I'd say I loved blenders interface even more polished than that of photoshop.
There's lots of interest in community asking if the in-house UI system they've created can be separated from the blender codebase so it could be its own GUI framework but IIRC it is not possible.
I'm on the opposite of the spectrum with Ableton -- I rather hate the UI and wish they would not reinvent the UI wheel so much. But then again I come from an FLStudio background and that programs has many of the same complaints leveled against it.
I think one category of complaints leveled against the UI/UX is these projects is that they are "fine". They are good enough to get real work done. And if you're fine with fine, then the objections seem needlessly nit-picky... and they are!
But these apps are for creative projects - you open them up to do creative work. It's certainly possible to do creative work in a "fine" environment, but it's a lot more enjoyable in an environment that sparks joy (tm).
The Blender transformation has been incredible: it went from "fine" to "sparks joy" despite the fact it's a massively complex behemoth. Sometimes I open Blender just because it makes me happy to see the UI. Open it up, extrude and scale a cube a bit, and close it. Ahh.
For me Aesprite (pixel editor), Ableton Live (music workstation), and Pico-8 (game maker) have the same feeling. It's just fun to work with the tool for anything... and double-y fun when you're working on something fun: it compounds the enjoyment.
When I first used Sketch when I was on Mac I had that feeling too. Going back to Inkscape after that was "fine". I really like Inkscape. It's my go-to vector editor, does everything I need, and I'm very grateful it exists. But I'd never open it up just to feel happy. I'd love to see it magically do a Blender.