The new menu design for V-Collection X

Software Instruments V Collection
#1

I’ve posted this on the Arturia facebook group where the responses were pretty much unanimous and have raised with the support team but wanted to post here too to make sure Arturia had visibility.

The new menu designs for all the V-Collection instruments have introduced graphical backgrounds which reduce accessibility for users with visual and other impairments and they have also added unnecessary clicks to find and audition new sounds.

They’ve broken pretty much every UI convention in every piece of software for the sake of what really is a gimmick.

The synth interfaces are attractive enough and mix usability with pleasant aesthetics, but menus have one function, to allow users to navigate as quickly as possible to the item they are looking for, and as such should be treated in the simplest most user friendly way possible.

The old menu required just two clicks which allowed you to open, browse categories, scroll presets, select and hear a sound.

The new menu requires four clicks to do the same.

There is absolutely no argument that justifies the new design and although it is only a small part of the experience it’s making me wish I hadn’t upgraded.

1 Like
#2

The worst part about the new menu is that those background images have no correlation to the categories; they just add clutter that makes it harder to read the text. I do like the larger text and click areas though.

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#3

HI @markturia and welcome to The Sound Explorers Forum!

Ah that’s a shame, i know there are at least a few of us here that have visual issues of one kind or another and i KNOW that Arturia DO listen to this kind of thing as they want their products to be accessible to as many people as is possible.

It might be an idea to log in to your account to contact The Arturia support team to make some suggestions directly to them.

HTH!

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#4

100%

It really wasn’t well thought through.
Totally agree with larger text re accessibility and click areas, but the original menu was built around hover states so you didn’t really need to click at all.

I’m just in Photoshop now and imagining what it would be like if every menu had an animated picture background…

#5

Hi Mat.
I already did do as quite often with UI changes like this there’s the option to roll back to the ‘classic’ view which I was hoping for.

Sadly not and it seems for now this is here to stay.

My only suggestion to them would be if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!!!

#6

Hey @markturia

It’s still worth bringing these things up though to keep them in people’s minds though. :sunglasses:

#7

Hmm, I don’t see any animated backgrounds etc. in my V-Collection X.

I’m guessing that’s because I haven’t updated it for a couple of weeks? Or I’m looking in the wrong place/instrument?

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#9

Sorry, animated background is perhaps a bit of an exaggeration.
There’s a colour change and the image shifts / scales a bit. So it’s more of a hover state.

Still completely pointless as it’s impossible to tell what the images are of anyway!!

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#10

Do you mean over on the right where the preset info is? I agree - pointless to have imagery there. Even if you can tell what it is!

(I must update and see what changes.)

#11

Sheesh. Forgot how big V-Collection is. :frowning:

#12

Hello,
FYI this has been already discussed here last year :

2 Likes
#13

This is great!! Thanks so much for surfacing it again.
Downloaded the PNG’s and going to try it now.

It’s a shame that Arturia aren’t listening as this is obviously fairly universally disliked.

Thanks again for this fix.

#14

Here is a post I wrote a while back addressing similar issues… can you cast a vote?

1 Like
#15

Great idea. Vote cast!!