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Music Software & Bad Interface Design: Avid’s Sibelius

Tantacrul · 1.7M views · 2018-11-15 · 21:35

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Overview

Tantacrul dissects the UX and UI of Avid's Sibelius music notation software, going through a long list of bad design choices. The review is both a comic rant and a practical lesson in interface design.

On Hacker News

Recommended as the most entertaining serious critique of a software interface, and a crash course in UX mistakes.

Recommended by 8 HN people across 8 months · HN mentions 2019–2026

Topics

UX & UI designMusic theory, synthesis & production
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ux designsibeliusmusic notationinterface designtantacrul

What people said

l__l · 2023-07 · Strong recommendation

If anyone is yet to see it, Tantacrul (on youtube) is now deeply involved with MuseScore (UX lead or similar?); he put out an awesome vid on the design of MS4 at the beginning of the year: [LINK] His video on how Sibelius' UX is a pile of shit remains one of my favourite vids on yt: [VIDEO]

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btown · 2021-10 · Strong recommendation

Since Sibelius and Finale are two industry-leading (and very much competing) music notation software systems, this headline made me do a quadruple-take! [LINK] [LINK] For those interested in (extremely entertaining) breakdowns of the Sibelius software and other offerings in this space from a UI/UX design perspective, I highly recommend Tantacrul's videos, which propelled him to becoming the head designer for MuseScore and Audacity. IMO, this and his Dorico video are must-watch crash-courses for any developer touching UX design, even outside of music! [VIDEO]

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wexq · 2021-05 · Strong recommendation

OSS needs more UI/UX people, and I think Tantacrul is fantastic for this. His twitter ( [LINK] ) and youtube ( [LINK] ) are full of interesting tidbits, an you can tell he's passionate about things. Even if you don't do music/notation his video on Sibelius, [VIDEO] , is ridiculously funny, but also on point.

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Sources

Video by Tantacrul, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

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