Andre LaFosse vs. Mark Sottilaro: The BAD DESIGN SLAPDOWN

[Mark <sine@zerocrossing.net>]

I apologize for the going off on the percieved lack of feature.  I have 
read the
manual, but the beta version, and without a real unit to corraspond it 
with,
it's hard to grok.  Also, we've been told that features were subject to 
change.
I wrongly understood by the first post that the ability to control the 
wet/dry
mix had been foregone.  It became clear that it was just done in an
unconventional way.  That's OK.

I still have to dissagree with you on the "what the creator conceived"
argument.  As a designer, I deal with the what the creator concieved/client
wants issue EVERY SINGLE DAY OF MY LI-I-FE!  I often get crazy, and yes, 
stupid
requests for things that I know the client really does not want, or things 
that
are not possible for various reasons.  It's my job to interpret the actual 
needs
and tweak until correct.  There is always compromise.

Here's a better example of what I'm talking about.  Recently we contracted 
out
the design of a Director presentation.  Our client is one of the biggest
software companies in the world.  They wanted something very slick, and non
powerpoint looking.  The designer did a beautiful animated background.  She
created an 800x600 image for EVERY SINGLE FRAME.  Showed it in the form of 
a
quicktime movie and duped the producer.  Walked away with a nice chunk of
change.  When the file was given to me, it was clear that no personal 
computer
currently made would be able to play this thing correctly.  Should I have
"gotten to what the designer was trying to concieve?"  NO.  It was done 
badly.
Beautiful, but utterly useless.  I ended up redoing it using a vector based
animation program (Flash)  So the moral of the story is, you've really got 
to
think of the client and how the end product is going to be used.  Because, 
buy
it's very nature, it has to interface with other gear, you've GOT to take 
into
account how other gear is made.  Being able to do a wet/dry mix seems 
pretty
reasonable.  Is there another looping device that doesn't do it?  I'm glad 
that
I was mistaken, and it does have at least a limited workaround for this.

Sometimes things suck.  If you don't believe it, try finding an old 
Brother (yes
the typewriter company) MIDI sequencer.  It was beyond non user friendly, 
it was
user hostile.  I swear it was the hardest piece of gear I've ever had to 
deal
with.  It did have all the features I wanted though.

and if ya'll have made it this far, if you're into sweet guitar loopage and
yummy dance grooves, buy Andre's album, you won't be sorry... it's well
designed.

Andre LaFosse wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> Mark wrote:
> >
> > I'm really sorry but I can't get behind the nicey nice "everything is
> > beautiful in it's own way" mentality going on about the wet/dry mix
> > issue.
>
> All due respect, Mark, but I think you're oversimplifying my point of
> view.  And being a bit unnecessarily insulting, for that matter...
>
> > We're not talking about some oddball feature, like being able to
> > "slip" tracks of a loop (which I admit is a cool feature).  We're
> > talking about basic design here.
>
> If it never ocurred to the designers at Electrix, then clearly it's not
> nearly as basic of a design feature as you might think, eh?
>
> I suppose people could have gotten mad at Oberheim for releasing a mono
> sampling device in 1994 that recorded at lower than 44.1 kHz...
>
> > The argument that it's supposed to be
> > a hardware version of ACID doesn't fly either.  ACID as far as I know,
> > doesn't record you in real time and drop you into a loop.
>
> ACID was the example I was given by Electrix themselves, when they
> themselves were describing their design concept for their product.
>
> I'm not trying to be an apologist for Electrix, man, I'm trying to give
> you some insight into the point of view from which their product was
> designed.
>
> Now, I'm sorry if you're frustrated at the Repeater being something
> other than what YOU were hoping it would be.  But the unit isn't just
> about the needs and wants of a specific user; it's also about the point
> of view that the inventor of the company is coming from, yeah?
>
> Maybe take a minute or two before you start chastizing the company, and
> try to get inside their specific point of view?
>
> Of course, taking a minute or two and actual having a tangible unit in
> your hands to work with before you start making requests for
> modifications is another possibility..
>
> > but when they
> > contacted me about features, I said "The footcontrol HAS to have access
> > to wet/dry mix and loop fade rate.
>
> Perhaps the utter and complete absence of a Repeater footcontroller
> sheds additional perspective on this concern...
>
> > If you bought a car that didn't let you shift into
> > reverse without turning off the car and restarting it, you'd make due.
>
> Or, to put it another way:
>
> If you pre-ordered a car from a company, WITHOUT having given it a test
> drive, and you waited months and months while the company tried to get
> an unprecedented set of design features in place for this new and
> innovative car, and you didn't take the time to utterly and completely
> familiarize yourself with all of the features in that car beforehand,
> and then found that the car didn't do things the way you had thought
> they might...
>
> ...well, is that the fault of the car manufacturer, or the customer?
>
> I mean, come on, man, the front and back panel, and instruction manual
> for the thing, have been readily available via the web site for AGES.
> If you yourself never thought to check for the location of a wet/dry
> control on the hardware interface of the thing, then how truly obvious
> should it have been to the guys who designed it?
>
> Do you always plop down $500 or so for a product you don't totally know
> about or understand yet?  If you do, is that the company's fault, or
> your own?
>
> > I'd bet you'd opt not to buy the car though, or if you couldn't, you
> > wouldn't buy another car from that company in the future.
>
> Or perhaps that company would be reluctant to spend any more time
> struggling to make stable and innovative products for a perpetually
> dissatisfied and jaded clientelle?
>
> [and Mark later said:]
>
> > So if you can just mute input from output, we should be golden, as
> > wet/dry mix can be handled by controling track volume.  True, one 
>function
> > that could control wet/dry mix would be sweet, but I could live with 
>this
> > fix.
>
> There, you see?  It's not the end of the world after all.
>
> Who knows -- maybe you'll even find a way of balancing and crossfading
> signals that would be impossible to achieve with one conventional
> wet/dry mix.  (Apologies in advance if that's an excessively "nicey
> nice" proposition...)
>
> I mean all of the above with all due respect to you, Mark, and everyone
> else.  But please, guys...  relax for a second.
>
> It's the day after Christmas.  That cool shiny toy you looked at in the
> catalog for months and months doesn't quite do everything you'd thought
> it would, or at least, not quite in the way you'd imagined.
>
> Relax, play with the thing, and be glad and grateful it's finally a
> reality.  Once you've got your head around the thing, and are conversant
> in how it operates... THEN it might be time to start making requests for
> feature modifications.
>
> Anyway...
>
> --Andre