New TC plugs are food for thought...

TC announced a couple new PoCo plugs today, and in doing so, also announced their new UI initiative. This is a subject that is near and dear to my heart, so I have a bit to say on the subject. (What are the odds?)

When you’re making plug-ins, you have to decide if you want to do a hardware look or a look that takes advantage of the environment (i.e. a computer screen. I’ve found that, in general, people prefer the former. I haven’t really explored something like the Fabrik C pictured above, but I’ve gazed longingly at the System 6000 stuff for some time. The two schools of thought are, in my opinion, as follows:

The Hardware School states that a device that does a particular thing is more intuitive if it looks like the hardware.

The Modern School states that it’s stupid to make a piece of software look like hardware, when it’s on a damned computer screen.

Now, when we’re doing something like Phase Two, which exists in the Real World as the Mutron Bi-Phase, logic would dictate that we make the UI as similar to the real thing as possible. (Which we’ve done.) But for something like Filterscape it makes sense to take advantage of the computer paradigm. (IMO, Filterscape is the single best modern UI there is.)

Speaking just to the email on the subject I’ve received, most people prefer hardware looking plug-ins to modern looking ones. I’ve done a bit of meandering in the AD product line before I settled on our current cartoonish hardware look, which I feel takes advantage of the computer environment, but still keeps an intuitive hardware feel to things. To get a good cel-shaded 3D look, I obviously need to tilt the hardware a bit, and this won’t work for something like Ronin.

Anyways, I’m just thinking out loud. What do you guys feel? Is something like the new TC plugins and their uber-modern interface better than something like DubStation and its simple, cartoonish UI?