>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.
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."