True, Blender really exploded when they re-designed the interface. I hope someday GIMP team understand that. The software is solid, but the interface isn't great. Some very simple workflow changes made Blender easier to use.
I know Blender has a lot of corporate sponsorship, so I think the explanation is there’s a “commoditize your complements” effect going on. But does anyone have a more specific hypothesis? E.g., why does Blender have so many complements and the GIMP so few?
I think a redesign of the icons was necessary, because the old ones don't look amazing. But you can make tasteful icons which are also colorful and recognizable.
(And I know you can switch icon themes, but when we're talking about UX, we're largely talking about the out-of-the-box experience. 99.9% of users are going to stick with the default icon pack.)
I still think you’ve chosen a bad example. Gimp’s UI is no worse than Photoshop’s, and that’s not open source.
So this must be what happened... over and over I've heard about people switching to Blender now, even many professionals. I tried it many many years ago and found it, quite honestly, awful.
I guess I should download it again and see how things have changed.
The issue is that many designers and engineers loathe Usability and Accessibility people (like Jakob Nielsen and Don Norman).
For me, it all started with Don Norman's excellent book The Design of Everyday Things[0] (nee The Psychology of Everyday Things).
Reading that book changed the way that I view the world. I can't walk through a door, anymore, without evaluating its affordances and usability.
The challenge (for me) is melding usability and aesthetics. In my experience, designing and implementing a truly usable software interface is hard. It's also highly iterative. A lot of "running things up the flagpole" stuff. I throw out a lot of code, and slaughter a lot of sacred cows.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things
It's true that there often exists a clash between designers and those who champion accessibility standards. IMO, this is normally because the designer in question hasn't enough experience working on software. Speaking for myself? I designed the accessibility features in Paint 3D while at Microsoft. I was in charge of accessibility of another Microsoft Studio that worked on Hololens software.
For MuseScore 4 (currently in development), I have made sure that every bit of UI passes web accessibility contrast standards and I have designed a new 'High Contrast Mode' which is being implemented right now. In addition, myself and another member of the UKAAF (Peter Jonas) have designed a far better focus state / keyboard navigation system into MS4 than MS3 had. This will enable much better screen reader support and will also help with ongoing efforts to introduce Braille support too.
I'm not one of those designers. But I do sympathise with the concern. I see it all the time!
Which is silly because good UX that works for people with disabilities or impairments also benefits fully able users in the vast majority of cases
Take three people who never used given software, ask them to do the most basic tasks. And fix the most common problems.
Your software is much harder to use than you expect.
You do not need UI/UX people, massive scale testing to fix low hanging fruit.
If something isn't "done" until it has at least survived a first user test, then we don't need to be quite as egoless, because we are a participant in the larger problem-solving process.
I also think your point on being overwhelmed matters a lot. Too many software processes are push-based, where an executive is cramming things in the hopper and insisting on a pace. I like pull-based processes. E.g., having a kanban board with WIP limits, so an individual unit of work takes as long as it takes.
