Music Software & Interface Design: MuseScore
Why Hacker News recommends it
Cited as a funny, informative teardown of bad interface design, and for the story that MuseScore hired him as head of design afterward.
What it is
Tantacrul gives a detailed UX and UI design review of the MuseScore 3 notation software and compares it with Sibelius. It examines visual appeal, navigation and notation quality.
Recommended by 4 HN commenters across 4 different months, 2019 to 2024.
What Hacker News said
Recommends xmprt · 2019-09 · on “The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think (2016)”
The solution isn't to put things in preference windows either because even smart users will find that cumbersome. There's an interesting pair of videos (if you have some time) that goes over the UI of two competing music scoring software and why one is bad and the other good. [LINK] [this video]
Recommends hexmiles · 2020-06 · on “MuseScore 4: Moving from notation software to composition software”
they actually hired the person behind this video (tantacrul): [this video] It criticize the user interface and experience of various music application. I find it very entertaining yet still informative
Recommends meowface · 2021-05 · on “Audacity Aquired by Muse Group”
If anyone's curious, here are Tantacrul's entertaining videos on MuseScore and designing MuseScore's new font, and the Audacity video from yesterday: [this video] [LINK] [LINK]
Recommends radicality · 2022-12 · on “MuseScore 4”
Obligatory funny video review of MuseScore 3 UI: [this video] Same author also has a funny video on the UI of another music notation program, Sibelius: [LINK]
Cites Nullabillity · 2020-05 · on “Linux Sucks 2020”
Tantacrul did one on MuseScore[0] (a music composing program), and ended up getting hired as their head of design[1]. [0]: [this video] [1]: Mentioned in [LINK] , but don't have the exact timestamp
Cites dry_soup · 2020-06 · on “MuseScore 4: Moving from notation software to composition software”
Exciting news! This feels like a Blender 2.8-style project. What's funny about this is that a composer/music YouTuber/UX designer called Tantacrul meticulously roasted MuseScore's UI on YouTube, and the MuseScore team ended up hiring him, leading to this project. The video in question: [this video]
Cites karlding · 2020-07 · on ““LibreOffice is at serious risk””
I agree. GUIs are hard! On the other hand, it seems like Open Source has a lack of designers that are willing to contribute. For example, in Tantacrul's critique of MuseScore [0], there's issues highlighted that seem obvious in retrospect, but in Open Source projects, unless there's someone who drives the user experience, it's easy to miss all these small things that add up to signal (whether rightly or wrongly is besides the point) a lack of polish. [0] [this video]
Cites ohazi · 2020-11 · on “Update on MuseScore 3.6 and 4.0”
For those out of the loop: Tantacrul is a composer who put together some hilariously scathing UI/UX video reviews for some popular composing software tools out there, including MuseScore [1] [2] [3]. The team developing MuseScore then brought him on as head of design. [1] Sibelius: [LINK] [2] MuseScore: [this video] [3] Dorico: [LINK]