Vvvv ecosystem and design

[jerry]

Thanks, @joreg.

@joreg

you don’t seem like you’re here to upset anyone.

That’s good news. :)

@joreg

hope to see you on our first meetup .

Oh yeah, I’d love to come. But am currently living in New Zealand. I’ll be in Berlin for a visit between the end of June and end of July to enjoy summer. Do you plan to have another meetup during that time?

@joreg

people who know how to handle RSS have the big advantage that they can also subscribe to a combination of tags on our blog, like e.g. news + devvvv. but this is just an alternative option to the activities which allows you to filter as you please.

Thanks a lot for pointing this out. I used to use RSS a lot. Unfortunately, it became less popular and made it harder to get news via RSS (certain tools died), and I kind of gave up on it. Anyway, I’m gonna look into it again and will try to make it work.

The ideal and most convenient way for me is to aggregate all news into my email inbox, without the need to manually check certain websites every day.

@joreg

usually peoples questions when approaching vvvv are very individual. i’d find it hard to write a general guide that suits everyone.

I agree people are gonna have different questions depending on their skillset and the problems they are working.
I was more thinking of a very general manifesto rather than a guide because there already are a few tutorials out there:

@jerry

Is there some kind of manifesto explaining this? Maybe also talking about what vvvv is not, who it’s not for and comparing it to other similar frameworks?

@joreg

so please just keep’em coming.

Thank you. I’m going to do that.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, that I had a tough time to overcome some initial barriers with vvvv. I believe the reasons are some very different approaches vvvv is taking with its user interface and other things I mentioned earlier. I don’t think that’s bad, I like diversity and believe some of those approaches are making vvvv super powerful and are the reason for me to keep going. On the other hand, I think if I didn’t have people in real life teaching me how to overcome those initial barriers I would probably have dropped it quickly.

Of course, I can only speak from my own experience and the experience of some fellows who were/are struggling in similar ways. Most of them have a background in visual design and have some good experience with textual programming. Part of my background is in UX/UI, by the way. I also tried other visual (and textual) programming frameworks like Quartz Composer, Vuo, Max/MSP. Some of them are not as powerful as vvvv and therefore probably more straightforward to learn in some ways. And still, I think there are a few things vvvv could learn from their approaches.

More bluntly spoken: My feeling is, that vvvv currently targets more advanced users. It’s hard for beginners to step into it. I don’t think vvvv itself is the main problem (although I see room for improvements there as well), but more in the way its special characteristics are communicated. In it’s current ecosystem, with an overwhelming website and lots of scattered information and in some cases outdated information. I’m sure people who use vvvv on a daily basis more comfortable with those systems and don’t have issues with it anymore.

I’m thankful for your answers pointing me to the things I need. But wouldn’t it be wonderful to have those things popping into new users eyes straight away to pave their ways?

As I sometimes find it hard to understand the reasoning behind vvvvs design (ecosystem and UI) I tried to have a few conversations with more experienced vvvv users in person. The answer I usually got was something like: “Everything in vvvv is designed to be like that on purpose. It’s perfect.” Or, “Don’t know. Just deal with it. It’s never going to change.” It sounded like there is not much of an open ear for suggestions and improvements regarding the general design of vvvv and its ecosystem in the vvvv community.
What is your opinion about it? I like to give feedback, but only if it’s being heard and considered.

I think it’s important to keep a platform very friendly for new users to maintain a healthy community. For me, it starts with excellent user experience, and I do see ways to improve things. I’m ultimately writing this to understand how the driving forces behind vvvv work and how much I want to commit to vvvv.

I can also live with answers like: “No, it’s too hard to cater for both pros and beginners, and we want to focus on pros.” Or, “Sorry mate, we are a small team, and we just don’t have the time.”
But my central questions are: Do you share my opinion, and see room for improvements when it comes to the overall UX which affects beginners the most? Are you interested in making changes to the platform in the future to address this?

When coming to Berlin next month, I’m happy to have a chat in person. Let me know if you are interested. Might be easier.