Grasshopper Interface - opinion

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Michael Pryor on October 23, 2017 at 12:12am

Most node editors are horizontal, with the exception of Houdini (cool program but IMO ugly to look at). Unless you mean the component names which seems just a preference to keep components smaller in the horizontal with long names. Also, most of the world is reading left to right, and considering grasshopper is in English I assume it follows the same reading. Lastly, most screens are landscape and every year they seem to get more and more horizontal. 

Permalink Reply by Matthew Buck on October 23, 2017 at 12:47am

Yes, you read to left to right, which implies there is something wrong with Grasshopper since the component names end up reading upwards. I am new to Grasshopper but having used Mac my entire computer life it is not to be assumed the people who design the software understand the ergonomics of a system. I have a PC at work and it is an ergonomic disaster.

Anyhow I would love to try a version that ran vertically. My intuition tells me it would be easier to follow all the wiring and read the components, which strikes me as kind of fundamental.

That's my opinion. In the vein hope I could stimulate some consideration I put it out there.

Thanks

Permalink Reply by Piotr on October 23, 2017 at 1:12am

I am a PC guy and I have a MAC at work and I hate that shit.

It's about personal preferences. I like horizontal layout since it's like reading a book (left to right, at least in my culture) and I don't like pivoting displays as it makes my sight tired.

Permalink Reply by Matthew Buck on October 23, 2017 at 9:18am

Yes and no. It is true in one sense - it is about personal preferences. A personal preference is many times just an indication of greatest familiarity. But that does not mean the choice is best ergonomically or conceptually. Perhaps the decimal, imperial argument in the USA is one example of this, or highway signage. Anyhow, it is unscientific relying on personal preferences here. Enter the ergonomist....

Some suggest the icon is a good work around. By the time I familiar with all the icons I guess it will be a mute point.

Permalink Reply by Daniel González Abalde on October 23, 2017 at 9:49am

about icon vs text, I do not think it's something so subjective where science has nothing to say. The understanding of written language in our brain, evolutionarily speaking, is much more recent than the recognition of images, obviously. The entropy of an image (shapes, colors, etc.) has more capacity to store information than text, and our brain is specialized in those tasks. Many of the great memo techniques are based on associating what is required to remember within an imagined image, to take advantage of the fact that the brain works better by relating images than concepts or names. 

I do not say that it is not a question of personal preferences, but that it is better for everyone to get used to the most efficient way, although it costs more at the beginning.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picture_superiority_effect

In experiments of associative recognition memory, participants studied random concrete word pairs, and line drawing pairs. They had to discriminate between intact and rearranged pairs at test. The picture superiority effect continued to express a strong effect with a greater hit rate for intact picture pairs. This further supports encoding theories ^[9] More recent research in associative recognition shows support that semantic meaning of nameable pictures is activated faster than that of words, allowing for more meaningful associations between items depicted as pictures to be generated.^[10]

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on October 23, 2017 at 3:09am

"[...] something wrong with Grasshopper since the component names end up reading upwards."

Yeah, vertical text is hard to read and was a mistake. Unfortunately there are opposing forces in the layout direction. Either the component name is drawn horizontally and makes the component wider than it needs to be in a horizontal layout, or the component inputs/outputs are all drawn next to each other instead of above each other making the component wider than it needs to be in a vertical layout.

Grasshopper 2 will still use horizontal left-to-right layout (with apologies to Arabic and Hebrew users, I know it's counter-intuitive for you), but I'll need to find a better way to draw the name of each component so that the text is neither vertical nor too space-wasting. It's a problem I haven't solved yet.

Permalink Reply by Daniel González Abalde on October 23, 2017 at 3:52am

Consider this options:

A) When the mouse over the component icon, the text is rotated 90 degrees to display horizontally and the attributes of parameters are hidden, the entire capsule used for the name of the component.

B) When the mouse over the component icon (or allways) display a sign on the top of the component (as a component message but above) with the name. I guess you already thought about it. But it can look good using your graphics magic :)

Anyway, I think this is not a problem because it is better to work with icons since the brain remembers and associates better images of representative icons than words. To become familiar with the components (name/icon/what it does) you only have to use them (instead of copying and pasting) or using Bifocals to have both options.

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on October 23, 2017 at 4:45am

I too prefer Icons over names, but there's plenty of people who prefer text. Capsules in GH2 look more like slabs and can thus have additional information in the thickness of the shape. The (nick)name of a component might fit here, but like I said, I've got nothing concrete on this yet.

Permalink Reply by Dr Gareth Paterson on October 23, 2017 at 5:38am

It may not be such a problem with Arabic speakers/readers. Although texts are read from right to left, numerals within a text are, surprisingly, read from left to right, so Arabic speakers/readers are comfortable with both directions. I taught a bit of Grasshopper (as part of my Rhino teaching) while I was at the German University in Cairo. I can remember apologising to a room full of students after I blithely announced that data flowed naturally, from left to right across the screen, just like writing. Nobody was the slightest bit bothered by this - they were too busy being amused by my obvious embarrassment, rather than offended or inconvenienced by any unintended cultural bias ;-)

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on October 23, 2017 at 5:51am

Good to know, thanks :)

Permalink Reply by Matthew Buck on October 23, 2017 at 5:31pm

Out of interest, did you test GUI ideas on volunteers before deciding?

Permalink Reply by Dr Gareth Paterson on October 23, 2017 at 6:16am

In addition to the icon-versus-text debate, can I make special plea for some indication of where components can be found in the menus - it's not always obvious... Well, not to me anyway. Maybe a pop-up showing which menu/sub-menu it can be found in when the mouse hovers over it?

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