A Design Critique on Positive Grid’s “BIAS FX”
The application/software that I decided to critique is “BIAS FX” by Positive Grid.
BIAS FX is a guitar amp and effects modeling software that allows musicians and guitar gear enthusiasts to plug in their guitar into their Mac/PC or iOS device and play into emulations of famous guitar amplifiers and effects. Positive Grid takes pride into their work of providing “significantly detailed and authentic emulations” of classic analog guitar pedals, vintage and modern valve amplifiers (amps), as well as studio rack gear.
BIAS FX is an application that I use almost every day. This application comes in two different versions: an iOS version for iPad and a desktop version for Mac/PC. While I own both versions, I prefer to use BIAS FX on my iPad — it’s just a lot easier to use on the go; it is as simple as “plug and play.”
A Self User Story
As a musician and guitar gear enthusiast, I want to be able to create new exciting sounds and great tone by experimenting with different amps and effects pedals. As a guitar gear enthusiast, I expect the simulated amps and effect pedals to react similarly to real life gear. For example, if the “level” knob of a guitar pedal increases the overall volume of the tone, I would expect the modeled guitar pedal to respond similarly. Similarly, amps should react in a similar fashion and follow the same principle. If BIAS FX claims that these emulations are authentic sounding, then effect pedals should react differently based on the order I set them in. If I would like to get a “dirty” tone, I can select an amp that resembles a real life “dirty” amp and expect similar tone from it. Since there are a lot of parameters that can change the sound I desire, as a result I would like to be able to save these settings so I don’t have to recreate the tone I have achieved through experimentation.
As a college student living in residence halls on-campus, I’m unable to utilize my gear to its full extent in a dorm setting. Having a 100 Watt amp in a college dorm at full volume is not the ideal roommate situation. As a result, I need an alternative that allows me to maintain the flexibility of real gear at a low volume.
Getting Around BIAS FX
The first thing you will see when using BIAS FX is the images and icons of amps and pedals look extremely similar to a real amp. This kind of design is known as a “skeuomorphism,” which is a design concept of making digital items resemble their real-world counterparts. Skeuomorphism is extremely popular in many guitar modeling software, as it represents a familiar user interface (that found in real life) for musicians and guitar players alike.
There are multiple ways to achieve my goals when using this product. Since I have owned this product for a long time now, I have created multiple presets, which save the exact amps, effects, and output settings of my preference for later use. This is quite a useful function for myself and many other users, as you don’t want to dial in the amps and pedals to the exact settings. In the following image, you can see that by simply tapping on the top left drop-down menu, you will see a list of all factory and user presets.
Suppose you don’t want to use a preset and you want to dial in the tone of your choice. Between the top bar settings and the full-blown amp/effect image, there is a yellow line with different amp and effect icons. This represents the signal chain of your amps and effects.
Each amp and/or pedal that is full colored and on the yellow line means that the gear is engaged. On the other hand, the darkened pedals are not engaged. Technically speaking, these design choices correspond to Gestalt’s principle of similarity, allows the users easily tell apart between on or off “gear.” This is an important visual feature that guides the user to let them know what pedals and amps are on or off as they play — especially in live scenarios. If they wish to add or remove a pedal from their signal chain, a user is able to tap on the pedal and swipe up to remove it or tap on a darkened pedal and swipe down to add it to the signal chain. You can select different amps and effects simply by double tapping on an amp or an effect.
After you have selected an amp, you can follow the exact same approach with each individual guitar pedal. When you select a pedal, the icon will appear in the guitar signal chain, allowing you to know that your pedal has been added.
As you dial different settings on your amp or pedal, BIAS FX shows a pop up that lets you know the specific setting you’re dialing to. Most importantly, these pop ups appear right on top of the selected knob. This follows the Gestalt principle of proximity, as this design helps you understand that the knob whose value you’re changing it the one right underneath it. As opposed to letting you “guess” or read off the semi-realistic design, they use digital concept ideas to guide you through this process. Similarly, when you are shown a full size image of a pedal, they also include an LED indicator to show whether a pedal is engaged or not.
Considering A Different Design
Call me unorthodox, but I believe that a product like this would not be successful or intuitive without a skeuomorph design. BIAS FX, or similar product, are targeted to an extremely specific audience. This audience is assumed to have had experience playing and handling musical equipment, especially guitar amplifiers or guitar effect pedals. Therefore, when using this product, this specific audience already has an idea and an expectation of how the app’s features can be used.
Second User Persona
For this section of the critique, I chose a close friend who has been getting into guitar amp and effects modeling software. The second user persona, who we shall refer to as “J.”, had never used BIAS FX before, but had heard of similar software, such as AmpliTube by IK Multimedia. As a result, he had an idea of what to expect.
J. is a fellow musician who has been showing increased interest in guitar modeling software. J. is a student living with roommates, so he seeks an alternative to a real life, loud amp. Additionally, J. has been interested in purchasing real effects pedals, so he wishes to try out new sounds in this modeling app before spending money on the real thing.
Most importantly, J. pointed out that he wished for “creative freedom” and “the ability to replicate other famous guitarists’ sounds,” something he expected out of the huge selection of amps and effects that BIAS FX provides. “I expect to be able to customize the tone as I would in real life. I want to tweak the amps and pedals until I achieve the tone I want,” J. exclaimed.
Furthermore, J. expressed his concern for presets: “If this app doesn’t have the ability to allow me to save presets of my personal guitar tones or those of famous guitarists, then it would kill it for me. I don’t want to re-tweak my amps and pedals over and over again.”
Additionally, J. expected to be able to “hook up” the app to external recording software so he can record his ideas. “An app like this should be able to record my guitar sound so I’m able to built upon my ideas as I go,” he said. This is an important feature that BIAS FX has indeed thought about, since the app allows for “Inter-App Audio.” This function lets a user run multiple audio apps simultaneously, such as BIAS FX for guitar sounds and Garage Band for recording.
J. and I sat down to explore the functionality and features of BIAS FX for iOS. After playing around with BIAS FX’s main functions, J. had described the experience to be “reminiscent of his real amp” and felt “excited to try out new [amps and pedals].”
I explained to J. that one of my favorite features was the ability to create and organize hundreds of user created presets. I asked J. to follow his intuition and the design of the app as he attempted to create a preset in BIAS FX for the first time (shown above). J. attempted to create a preset the most “intuitive way.”
What a normal user would have thought is that the function for adding a preset would be located in the same group where presets are selected. Naturally, J. tried to search for ways to add his new preset within this drop-down menu.
However, J. was not able to add a preset his first time. Instead, as you can see in the figure above, J. was able to add a new “folder” of presets, which is empty, but he was unable to add a new preset.
After several attempts, J. was able to figure out how to add a new preset. It was interesting to see that saving a preset was this difficult for a new user. After many failed attempts and fumbling around the app, J. figured how to add a preset (shown above).
He described the experience to be “weird” and “taking too much time.” J. pointed out that he disliked that the “new preset” function was not included inside but outside of the presets menu. He said, “I was expecting to find it there, that’s why I kept tapping on the empty presets. You would think you can add any preset to any empty slot you see, but that’s not the case.”
While J. enjoyed most of the functionality that BIAS FX provided for him, he felt like the preset function didn’t have to be such a difficult process to go through.
Conclusion
I have used BIAS FX for about four years now and I’m completely satisfied with the user experience they provide. While the only drawback is the non-intuitive way of adding new presets, every thing else about the app is great. I enjoy the versatility of tones that I’m able to get out of the app while maintaining a low volume in the college-dorm setting. There are hundreds of tonal possibilities that I can achieve, even so that until these days I still discover new tones, feeding on my musical creativity.