Did you post the wrong image? That’s our current logo.
Hi steve, thank you for your endorsement in moving the UX/UI discussions forward then.
Is it ok then if we propose things like:
- a splash screen (that the user can enable or disable)
- a welcome screen (a different one than the one we have today)
- and new interface? (buttons, and themes)
- new organization of the interface? (moving things around)
Thanks!
Victor
It’s OK to propose anything you like. See the “rules” in the pink box at the top of the page. “Images and suggestions posted here are primarily for fun”.
As you see by browsing through this forum board, there’s a huge range of ideas presented, very few of which have been or will be used in Audacity. A few have been (very few), and a few more may be, but most won’t. The idea of this forum board is that a lot of Audacity users want to share their artistic vision for Audacity, so this board was set up as a place to do that.
Hi steve, I see.
While I have a lot of respect for everyone in this forum and I am glad that such a space exists… isn’t it possible to have some work submitted in a different channel inside of the Audacity project that could be considered as a prototype for something? Do you know if anything like this exists today or is it just mere luck that any of the artwork/proposals of the volunteers here are studied, considered, and then transformed into a feature?
It is really good that you said what you said because this is exactly what I am trying to avoid. I don’t want to spend hours into something that does not even have a remote chance of being considered to be adopted, or at least looked at, for the Audacity project.
I guess what I am trying to say is: do we have an UX/UI team inside of the Audacity to submit proposals and prototypes or is it just artwork and no one is really looking into this side of the application?
Just want to get a clarification on this to know if I should do any work on this or not. It would be really frustrating, to me at least, to submit hours of work to know it would be pinned into a forum section and never be looked at seriously.
Thanks
Victor
Do you realize that this is a project run by a very small team of part-time volunteers in their spare time - it’s not a major software corporation with masses of payrolled staff, layers of management and teams for this that and the other. We have 3-4 developers and 3-4 QA folk (and these QA folk are also the the key contributors on this Forum).
This is the channel - as I said above our 3-4 QA folk are the key contributors to this Forum - so rest assured I’m sure all of them will have seen it. There is also a Quality email list but it’s the same folk who inhabit that eco-sphere.
WC
Hi wc. Thank you for your reply.
There seems to be a disconnect in what I am saying and you guys are perceiving. Apologies if I am not being clear enough. Is there space to open a new and small team of volunteers to propose new ideas to influence Audacity application? I am not asking anything from the team besides space to talk about these other topics. This will be composed by new team members.
This is what I am trying to say. I would like to be one of the first people to join this small team to propose new ideas.
What do you think?
Victor
You can certainly propose ideas. Many users do. We have a huge list of proposed ideas here: https://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Feature_Requests
Some of the ideas eventually get implemented, but implementation take time and effort for one or more developers. Audacity developers are volunteers, so they tend to take up ideas that interest them.
The next release after 2.4.0 is planned to implement a “Unitary Project format”, which has been a very frequently requested feature for many years. It’ll be a big job, so there will not be much (or any) new stuff in that release other than the new project format.
Hi steve. I see! So I believe I understood now that the formal way to propose changes would be to submit a ticket in the feature request list. Got it.
Apologies for the long thread and thank you for your explanation along the way.
Victor
Hi Victor,
I’m interested in doing some initial UX research to discover the hardest to use parts of Audacity. I’m doing this as a ux portfolio piece but could be useful to the audacity dev team.
There are a few examples on the wiki of this being a need for the dev team:
The icon/logo is in many ways the cherry on the cake. At this stage in Audacity’s development we are more interested in computer savvy graphics designers who will help us on an ongoing basis, improving the look of the wiki, the manual, icons in the program and so on, rather than just a new logo. We would like to have a unified appearance rather than a patchwork and, when we have Theming working well, we would definitely like new skins for Audacity.
A well-argued report on the usability and discoverability of Audacity features would be helpful to us. We have to use our resources wisely, so
Not sure if you have any interest in this, let me know.
- Morrow
Hi Morrow,
Yes. I would like to be part of this if you allow me to. Understand what are the different types of user that use Audacity, what are their primary uses of the application and what are the main complains in the main groups. So we can propose new windows for the features that can be improved and addres their issues/improvements as much as possible.
Audacity is an amazing piece of software. It just needs, in my opinion, more modern UI/UX.
Thanks,
Victor
Yes Victor I think that is exactly right. The first step could be a survey that we post on the forum maybe under:
https://forum.audacityteam.org/viewforum.php?f=50
I’m going to move this conversation over there as well.
and perhaps we could post the survey on the audacity quality mailing list:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/audacity/lists/audacity-quality
I think the main goals for this survey would be to get a sense of what the typical users are to then be able to make personas for these users.
Then once we have personas we could then figure out what the biggest pain points are for them using audacity.
That sound right to you?
Just sent you a message in private. 
Hi morrow, I took the initiative to try to scratch a small itch I have with Audacity.
The itch I currently have is that the icon is way too dark and does not have a white stroke around the icon so it is really hard to distinguish Audacity icon on the taskbar.
So I took the initiative to edit the stroke white, with Affinity Designer 1.8.3 and to convert it to an icon (with MULTIPLE sizes) using Axialis IconWorkshop 6.9.1.0.
I notice that this icon, if I did everything correctly, could be used in the place of the original app of the application, and/or the website icon (favicon).
Please check the “new” icon in https://mega.nz/folder/BmJjgC4R#pMtcLF-wrlcVSXKnhPkXxQ and let me know of your thoughts.
Everyone is open to criticize/comment on this in order to improve it.
Thanks,
Victor
You have based your icon on Audacity’s old logo.
The old logo was updated a few years ago. The current logo is available in the Audacity source code here: https://github.com/audacity/audacity/tree/master/images
Hi steve, sorry about this.
Thank you for pointing me in the right direction, as always! 
Thanks
Victor
There are also 2 options to change the favicon of the forum/audacity wesite. If possible, of course.
Let me know if this is possible, if this is desired, and if this looks good. I can try to replicate this for the dektop app icon as well.
Please see the images attached.
Thanks,
Victor
Are you suggesting using your “Audacity Icon Windows.ico” as a replacement favicon for the forum?
If so, are you suggesting the replacement because you think “Audacity Icon Windows.ico” looks better than the forum’s current icon?
If so, in which browsers, with what themes, on which platforms does it look better?
These screenshots show the current favicon, and “Audacity Icon Windows.ico” in Firefox 77.0.1 with the default theme, then the dark theme:
I think “Audacity Icon Windows.ico” looks better than the current favicon in the light theme, but the white line around the edge looks rather ugly in the dark theme. What do you think?
Because the forum runs on phpBB, changing the favicon is a bit different from how it is done on a static HTML page, but yes we can change the forum’s favicon if we have an alternative that we agree is an improvement. It’s a bit tricky because it involves editing the forum’s theme template, so you’ll need to convince me that it’s worth the effort
Hi steve, thank you so much for taking the time to look at this so closely.
Damn! I think you are right! hehe. It does look slightly better on a light theme… but yes… it looks ugly on a dark theme.
I will do more tests to see if there’s a way to make it look nicer both on a light AND dark theme.
I don’t want to give you more work than you already have. If I am able to achieve a good result, and if you and everybody else on the project agrees, we can change in the website favicon?
To be really honest I am just trying to make an icon that look good on a dark taskbar on a Windows 10 machine. Let’s see if I am able to achieve this or not!
Fingers crossed. Thank you again for your time and patience on this. Appreciate it.
Victor
Hi Victor, Not sure if it is any better but maybe trying a circle? I tried to do a pixel perfect one on the right.
Hi Morrow, that looks quite nice!
Are we going to use an .ico file for the favicon of the forum, website and possibly the application? Or just a PNG file for the website/forum?
What do you suggest? How did you come to the images you are showing here?
Thanks!
Victor