I stumbled upon this YouTube clip of Avicii giving the camera (folks at home) an insight into his creative process.
I have a theory that humans and software aren’t as incompatible as a lot of people in the role of “user experience” preach. All to often I hear the word “usability” that is commonly used as a beating stick for why people should recreate software to suite the authors bias. They will often throw down a lot of fragmented behaviour science / principles of design that leaves the intended audience bedazzled as if to say out loud “ok you win, yo clearly can articulate design in ways that go beyond my simpleton vocabulary”.
My theory? we think and act in patterns, we look at software as a series of patterns that we catalogue. Our job as UX practitioners is to give the audience a series of patterns they can lock onto, memorize and work there way around to achieve tasks.
In the case of FL Studio and Avicii, here’s a guy using a piece of software to create music that you will no doubt hear on your local radio station at some point. The way he approaches the software in the video is something to see, given how fast and fluid he is with the information being presented. Observing his approach to the tool is simple, he’s working with patterns and even more so he’s working with audio to underpin these patterns.
It’s also nice to know that successful artists like Avicii approach the creative process in a way that’s normal ;)
