We considered several options for elegantly hiding certain features. The more important elements needed to be more visible, at the top level of the interface, while the secondary elements could be slightly more tucked away. Because of the transient posture of the app, we didn’t have the luxury of a lot of space to easily show all the controls at once. Once we’d determined that SoundSource would live in the menu bar, the next step in our design process was creating a list of the main functions we wanted the app to have:įrom this list, we needed to determine which elements were primary and which were secondary. At times, it felt more like working on a mobile app than a traditional desktop app, because of the smaller surface area. Making everything we wanted fit into the tight constraints of a menu bar app proved to be an interesting design challenge.
With this in mind, the menu bar was the obvious home for SoundSource. Understanding that transient posture was essential to the app’s design. Occasionally, SoundSource needs to be accessed for a quick tweak, then just as quickly hidden away. It needs to stay out of the way, so the user can accomplish other things. SoundSource is very different, as it works for you in the background, nearly invisibly. They tend to have a lot of features, and a correspondingly sprawling interface. These are apps you spend hours upon hours in. Products, too, have a predominant manner of presenting themselves to users.Ī workhorse app like Photoshop or Sketch, for example, takes over most of the screen and has what Cooper would call a ‘sovereign’ posture. The soldier is wary and alert the toll collector is bored and disinterested the actor is flamboyant and larger than life the service representative is upbeat and helpful. Most people have a predominant behavioral stance that fits their working role on the job. From Cooper’s essential interface design book “ About Face”: Whether intended or not, every app has what design researcher Alan Cooper calls a ‘posture’. This is a story of how we got to our eventual release. Unlike some more linear updates, the design and conceptualisation of SoundSource 4 began from a nearly blank slate. Despite its version number, SoundSource 4 is an entirely new app, with massive updates over what came before. Last month’s release was officially SoundSource version 4.0, but that doesn’t really tell the whole story.
#Soundsource free alternative mac
SoundSource can help every Mac user who uses audio, whether you’re streaming music, participating in voice chat, or just watching videos. Posted By Neale Van Fleet on April 19th, 2019Īt the end of March, we unveiled an all-new release of SoundSource, our powerful system-wide audio controller.
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