This app is a pretty cool idea, and I'm sure its users love it.
I wish open source software developers understood that if an app's UI is so unintuitive that it takes days worth of dedicated learning to figure out how to use it, it's never going to get adopted by the mainstream. I can't figure out how to use this app, and it's not because I'm stupid, I'm an app developer myself, it's because I don't have the time to invest in learning the unintuitive paradigms and labels used in this UI.
If the audience for this project is it's creators and dedicated hobbyists, then this comment doesn't matter. But if open source apps have any intention of becoming mainstream, they need to invest in UI design and usability. A user friendly UI is at least as important as the code and technical aspects, and open source software could reach so many more people if open source devs took some UI design courses or learned how to partner with UI designers.
> if an app's UI is so unintuitive that it takes days worth of dedicated learning to figure out how to use it, it's never going to get adopted by the mainstream
There may be some rough edges, and it would definitely benefit from a quickstart help screen IMO, but days? If it takes you "days worth of dedicated learning" just to use the app, the app isn't the problem.
And to more gently push back on the general point: FOSS UX isn't always the best, but in my experience it's rarely notably worse than anything else. Typically, it's ugly but perfectly functional, and taking 5 minutes to poke around is enough to figure out how everything works (for Android apps, at least).
I wish open source software developers understood that if an app's UI is so unintuitive that it takes days worth of dedicated learning to figure out how to use it, it's never going to get adopted by the mainstream. I can't figure out how to use this app, and it's not because I'm stupid, I'm an app developer myself, it's because I don't have the time to invest in learning the unintuitive paradigms and labels used in this UI.
If the audience for this project is it's creators and dedicated hobbyists, then this comment doesn't matter. But if open source apps have any intention of becoming mainstream, they need to invest in UI design and usability. A user friendly UI is at least as important as the code and technical aspects, and open source software could reach so many more people if open source devs took some UI design courses or learned how to partner with UI designers.
/rant