PC Interface: Make it Touch-friendly

[Montago]

I have a touch screen on my Laptop and are using it to play piano on the sheets holder.

It's however cumbersome to use the mouse/keyboard so i'm using the Touchscreen instead - which works pretty good.

The interface is however not optimized for Touch, with too small buttons and at times, cumbersome flow.

ideas that would improve the interface (and your work):

- Develop for Touch-First (think iPad/Android) and use that interface on PC
- Bigger buttons in general would help
- Set max-width on the song-list elements, currently they are too wide with the name/buttons on the far left and the rating on the far right...
- Let the settings panel be something you can invoke from ALL pages - have a top menu (Office's Ribbon) style menu system.
- Avoid having Mouse-hover menus/info ... currently something is popping up when i try to touch click the metronome, play/pause, back menu items.
- Start the program in full screen mode instead of window (assume the user wants to play the game rather than fiddle with windows), then show a popup that explains that ALT+ENTER will exit fullscreen ... or make a menuitem for it.

Generally i would recommend you hiring a graphical designer (UX) if you don't have one - it would boost the sales, the UX, and make the product shine.

[Nicholas]

... currently something is popping up when i try to touch click the metronome, play/pause, back menu items

Do you mean the little hover-over timeline position indicator? It sounds like you're tapping too low. The #3 step below will fix that.

assume the user wants to play the game rather than fiddle with windows...

... then show a popup that explains that ALT+ENTER...

Isn't this contradictory? The last thing any user wants the first time they open an app is a popup telling them to fiddle with windows. (Or a popup at all.) I do agree that an option for full-screen mode in the Settings screen -- or even just a mention of the shortcut -- would make it more discoverable.

Other steps you may like to take:

1. Hold the Shift key while launching Synthesia to open the configuration window.
2. Find the "System.TouchscreenMode" entry in the list and add a check to the box to make the on-screen keyboard respond better to touch.
3. Find the "Graphics.ScaleOverride" entry in the list and type either a "1.5" or "2.0" in the box to increase the size of UI elements.

That #3 step usually isn't required if your monitor's DPI settings are correct, but we offer the setting for misconfigured systems. At 2.0x you'll get the full "Retina" experience with crisp, large textures and easy to tap controls.

[Montago]

After reading your mail i need to clarify something: I'm playing on a Roland Piano using MIDI to my Touchscreen enabled Laptop.

Yeah, the timeline indicator. Maybe you could add this as a static background element of the timeline which always shows instead of having a hover action....

Excuse me for being frank, but holding Shift-key while starting the program to access adv setting reeks of "designed by engineer"

but yeah, like i said, starting the program in full screen would be better i think.

[Nicholas]

Excuse me for being frank, but holding Shift-key while starting the program to access adv setting reeks of "designed by engineer"

I suppose you could always use the alternative method: start the app using the command prompt with the following options:

Code: Select all

Synthesia.exe --on-startup Configuration

Is that any user-friendlier?

To be fair, the Settings screen in the app contains the vast majority of things a user might want to tinker with. The advanced configuration window is for those strange cases where your keyboard is non-standard and needs a different kind of MIDI reset message sent to it or whatever. It has a lot of things that can easily break the app if they're set incorrectly. And accidentally-broken apps feel like something to keep a little more tucked away. Imagine it like the "no user-serviceable parts inside" sticker you might find on a computer power supply. The primary reason to change anything in that list is "because the support people told me to".