Another project that has pretty much lived in the backwaters of the GNOME desktop is gnome-sound-recorder. I figured this neat little app really deserved a refresh, so it can be a helpful tool to more people.
Click to enlarge. You can also find the larger image on the Usability Whiteboard.
As you can see a lot of inspiration came from Cheese. What Cheese really does well is removing the need to interact with the file system directly. A thing that we should encourage more apps to do. Banshee and F-Spot are two other good examples of this.
I sent this idea to the gnome-media maintainer Marc-André Lureau who sounded pretty excited. So I hope this will land into GNOME 2.30 / 3.0.
Nothing is implemented yet so more thoughts and tips are welcome. 
Special thanks to Andreas, Cube and Nick for their suggestions.
I like the small equalizer on the left.
There should be some kind of feedback to the user letting her know how to adjust the input volume and/or how loud to speak. Color could be used for that; e.g. if you’re too loud (which results in clipping, which means loss of sound quality), the topmost bars in the equalizer could be drawn in red.
Really nice! Keep the good work up.
A great feature would be a volume gain/compressor for recorded pieces, as standard mics have a low output.
Future function noise reduction?
I love it!
What’s that theme called btw?
I would get rid of the File and Edit menus. In such a simple app that is for just recording audio, there is going to be nothing in the Edit menu worth having there anyway. You can’t really do much to it. And the File menu sort of implies dealing with files, when you’re trying to abstract away the idea of these things being files. It might even be pertinent to get rid of the menus entirely here. I also don’t understand what the ==== is for here, and why the Record button is so big and only text. I would get rid of the menus, and have only a toolbar with New, Play/Pause (only sensitive when existing files are selected), and Record. I would avoid sticking only the file name in the title, as it could be confusing when searching for the sound recorder window, especially if there are other windows with similar titles.
Hi
This looks fantastic! I have one question, why isn’t there an icon next to the Record button? Like http://www.iclarified.com/images/tutorials/1527/6534/6534.png
To me it seems kind of inconsistent to show a PLAY icon, but write RECORD without an icon! Just my 2 cent.
Keep up the good work.
//MadsRH
Hi Hylke,
I hope you will take your time to look at more applications - many of Gnomes application could get a refreshed look 
This is really lovely
Thanks for this - hope someone will implement it.
I’m confused about two things:
1. I don’t really understand your reasoning for the renaming:
« This [name change] encourages people to use the sound recorder as a personal voice recorder »
How is that better ? Why do we want to encourage people to record their voice rather than any sound ?
I’m not saying this is bad, I just don’t understand :-/
2. Your design seems to put the « replay » feature in the center (the most prominent part of the UI is the « play » button combined with the progress bar of the sound being played). In contrast, the « record » button seems hidden (I had a hard time finding it).
However, it seems to me that the application is mostly about _recording_, i.e. replaying the sounds you recorded is just a really nice feature, while recording them is the goal of the application.
That seems contradictory to your mockup.
—-
Anyway, that’s waaaaaay better than the current design, and except for those two little things, it’s really nice (I especially like the filesystem abstraction, reminds me of Cheese). Thanks for your work
Wow, with gnome globalmenu, that would look awesomely elegant! What theme is that?
Congratulations! these things are a good start towards the semantic desktop…
Just a ramble of ideas that came to my mind right now:
-. Basic Record Arithmetics!!! I mean, give the user the possibility to add a record to another, maybe substraction is not so easy, to multiply a record, to divide a record in several parts, etc…
-. Apply the principle used by Cheese for video manipulation, to the sound recorded. Things like Jail, Orchestra, Hole or Bathroom effect…
-. Do the previous while keeping the UI clean and simple…
So did you program this or did you just create the mockups?
Either way, it looks absolutely beautiful and easy to use!
It certainly removes a lot of unnecessary stuff - well done!
As I’m curious, and usability intrigues me:
- Why isn’t the record button next to the play button, and why is the play button represented with an icon, and record with text?
- I agree that choosing the input source is not always needed, and default should be a microphone, but some feedback on what the current input source is, could be handy to avoid confusion… If you put the record button next (or “before”) to the play button, you will get space for this.
E.g “Ready to record” -> “Ready to record from ” where is “microphone” or the currently selected input source. If no input source is found, or if the default setting is to record from microphone, and the user has not set the input source manually, the text could read “No microphone to record from. Set the source in Edit->Preferences” (or something similar).
Is this a mockup or an actual screenshot of the application?
I really hope that the need for filesystem interaction can be removed for standard users (obviously, the hardcore geeks will always be able to tinker with it via the CLI or by delving deep into folder hierarchy).
BTW, what is the theme used here (if it’s not just a mockup).
I use gnome-sound-recorder for recording lessons in my uni … this looks really nice to me and i thing it will be great to have some basic search/tagging function like gnote do. And i think name should include dates by default… so you can just add some more info if you like ( History lesson Tue 28 July 11:08)
Can you please tell me the names of these amazing window and gtk themes?
Paul Frields made an app called pulsecaster for making podcast interviews by recording a VoIP call from Ekiga or Twinkle. would be neat if that functionality could be merged into gnome-voice-recorder. Pulsecaster can be found here:
https://fedorahosted.org/pulsecaster/
Don’t make small apps even bigger.
Less padding everywhere (but not too less)!
Currently GNOME features too big paddings. With such mockups like yours above, will get insanely big…
Oh, well, it looks awesome. And interface seems usable. And the colors are nice. But nothing besides ^^ .
Hey there, pretty slick looking. There’s something that annoys me with the concept of not caring about the filesystem though, so let me just describe my use case (which surely isn’t uncommon).
I record the sound from the classes I attend, and I store it as speex files inside different folders for each class I attend during the day. So I need the save button to be able to tell it to “move the file in the folder for that particular course” after recording.
Afterwards, I do not want/care to see the file in gnome-sound-recorder. It’s basically fire-and-forget, because when I want to go back to a class, I’ll open the course folder and have my notes, the recordings, the slides, etc. I will never think of opening gnome-sound-recorder instead of directly accessing the folder with nautilus.
How would you handle that?
Also, there’s quite a difference between recording in flac vs vorbis vs speex. I somehow think the users should have that information in their face instead of having to “guess” that it exists and having the “insight” to dig into a preferences dialog.
This is really nice. I never really used the recorder, but I think this is mostly because it never really worked… technically and from a usability pov. With pulseaudio the technical problems seem to be vanishing slowly but surely… and this mockup could make this things actually usable!
Looks great Hylke! One recommendation that I would make based on feedback I received from hardware OEMs is to have a simple UI for muting/unmuting the mic and a volume control for the microphone. This is a common request we have at Novell from partners pre-installing Linux on their systems. Going into pavu-control is not what the normal user really wants to do.
Hi,
This soft is a good idea, ideal for audio notes.
What is the GTK+ Theme you are using?
Thanks
This looks beautiful!
A bit related, Sound Recorder in Gnome 2.26.0 has exit dialogs with text like this:
The useful information is the part where it says ‘Untitled’. Is it possible to make it just display the title of the file instead of its temporary path the way gedit does? That would be nice, it is confusing the way it is.
I like it (obviously :P)!
Marius Gedminas: That’s a good idea.
Rabe: Yea, noise reduction should be on by default.
Rodney: I don’t want to have Volume levels and Preferences in the main screen, there would be too many buttons in my opinion. The toolbar is one thing I wated to get rid of
MadsRH: we can put an icon next to the text there.
Kris Thomsen: I would like to take a look at more apps. If you have any ideas?
bochecha: 1. because they already know the physical device, and the name “Sound recorder” isn’t that common I think. Anyways it’s just a small think that would help a little. 2. Yes I’m thinking of placing the searchbar and Play button at the button, but it causes other problems.
sebasmagri: Those are great ideas! But I thinnk out of the scope of this project. I think if you want more things like that it should be a new app.
Brett Alton: Just a mockup.
Mats Taraldsvik: I put the Record button there because I wanted it to be big and it needs space. I just used text for Recrod becase I don’t thing the Record symbol is that familiar. Second point: Most people only have one mic.
Alexey Fisher: Good points. The filenames are listed in a treeview, so you can search by typing.
Patrick: Sounds cool, but I think out of the scope of this app.
Livio: I’ve tested this in glade with Clearlooks and it’s much smaller than the actual mockups.
jeff: With this UI you will have to switch to an other folder before recording, or move the files to a different place afterwards. You can still access the files through nautilus, it just saves to a default location. When you move files from the default recordings folder to your course folder it will disappear from the list in the voice recorder.
I don’t think users care too much about the encoding format. As long as you can record and play, I think Preferences isn’t too hidden at all.
Gary Ekker: It is a “Sound level” thing. I think we could make it a lot easier if the pavu-control didn’t have a million sliders that nobody cares about.
Roshan: This app always saves to your prefered folder so you will never see a dialog like that
For the people wondering what the theme is: It’s based on a inkscape widget set by Garrett LeSage. I’m currently working on making it a theme.
Thanks all for your ideas!
Very nice, that is a big improvement to the current version. But I think we can even better.
This things I’d like to change in the mockup:
1. Use colors in the levels to help the user to keep the recordings distortion-free. Something like this:
http://files.getdropbox.com/u/1069285/audio_levels.png
2.1 Remove the icons from the list. They are always showing the same icon (correct me if I’m wrong), that doesn’t give any extra information to the user.
2.2 Show always the Date time of the recording. That is an important Information for the user.
2.3 Show the length of the recording in a less technical way. Not 3:43 but 3m 43s
Here the second mini mockup:
http://files.getdropbox.com/u/1069285/voice_recorder.png
P.S.
Can you perhaps upload your “source” file of the mockup, that would it make easier to play with some more changes.
Tobias Thanks! definitely points i will put in the improved version.
I thought a little bit more about the Voice Recorder. Why is the playback the first thing and not the recording?
My first idea to solve this was to reorder the elements in the main window. But then I had an idea I liked much more. What do you think about moving the playback controls into the list of recordings?
To not overload the list, the playback controls should only visible in the selected recording. Here the mockup:
http://files.getdropbox.com/u/1069285/voice_recorder2.png
I even added a “Properties” button into the list, this way it easier for the user to reach this without going through the menu. If you add this change you should even consider to union the “File” and the “Edit” menu to something like “Voice Recorder”, otherwise “Edit” would be to empty.
Here an other mockup:
http://files.getdropbox.com/u/1069285/voice_recorder2.png
I moved the playback controls into the list of recordings. This cleans up the main interface even more and optimise mouse movements for the user.
As you can see I even added a buttons to open the properties. Now you can even join the “File” and “Edit” menus to a new “Voice Recorder” menu.
Tobias: Dude, that’s exactly what i drew up yesterday.
http://bomahy.nl/hylke/blog/images/gnome-voice-recorder-sketch.pdf Thanks!
Though the properties makes it kind of cluttered and isn’t something you really need anyways.
HaHa. And moving the actual recording into the list looks like the logical next step.
I’m looking forward to your next version of mookups on you blog.