A suggestion for the navigation mode to navigate through the pedalboards and snapshots. I noticed two things here.
the names of the pedalboards and snapshots are displayed centered. This is not perfect from UX point of view and typographically. For one thing, the eye orients to the left margin for anyone reading from left to right. If the words do not all start on the same line, the eye has to search for the beginning of each line again. This makes orientation more difficult. Also from the typography one knows the rule that one should never represent more than three lines centered under each other, because it is badly readable. The indented active text makes it even more difficult.
Suggestion: Text alignment on the left and maybe do without the arrow at the active line. This is probably already sufficiently emphasized by the dark background.
it is not to be recognized in the standing on the first view whether one is in the pedalboard selection or in the snapshots. The words are written above, but can be quickly overlooked at a distance.
Suggestion: Invert one of the two modes, i.e. not black on white but white on black.
It would also be nice that if you turn off the dwarf in navigation mode, it would be there again when you turn it on.
Thank you for making these valuable suggestions! We have talked about them in the team and performed some tests, and we decided to partially adopt them for the next builds.
Regarding your first suggestion:
-We will align the text to the left for the pedalboard and snapshot lists in navigation mode
-We can not get rid of the symbol to indicate which pedalboard/snapshot is active, as it is possible to turn knob 1 to scroll through the list, and click knob 1 to load the selected item. We use the dark background to indicate which item is selected, so we need another indicator to show which item is actually active.
-We have changed the indicator for the active item into a diamond shape, so that it is easier to differentiate from a regular character (the arrow). We tried placing this to the right side of the item to keep the starting positions of all lines alligned, but it ended up looking quite chaotic, so it is still on the left side of the item.
Regarding your suggestion to invert one of the two modes:
-We will still do some internal testing to see if we can make this look and feel right, but it requires a bit of a rewrite of some code, so it will unfortunately have to wait a bit due to time constraints. Rest assured that we will look at this as soon as we have time!
Regarding booting into the mode that was last active before powering off:
-Unfortunately this is not possible right now, because it would create issues if booting with the web interface open. (for the same reason that the device can not go into navigation mode with the web interface connected)
-I have added this to our list of feature requests for the future.
Oh, thats sound great. If you get bored you can scroll the selected entry left/right if it can’t be displayed completely. Leaving the indicator on the left side is the right decision. On the right side it would not be in line with expectations from a UX point of view. The explanation for arrow and diamond is absolutely understandable. I would do the same with the functions behind them.
Btw. regarding the invert. After using it a lot I think one can get used to. So if it’s to complex I don’t think it is necessary. To explain a little more. I had built a midi pedal with pretty much the same navigation capability. Then during a live performance I had forgotten to switch from pedalboard-selcet mode to snapshot-select mode, because both modes looked very similar. I then changed the background color in snapshot mode from black to green (which could be complicated on the dwarf ), which was then really very clear to see. After that, this didn’t happen to me anymore. Since the font and the display are larger on the Dwarf than on my selfmade midi-pedal, the risk is not as great here.
And what also needs to be mentioned again. I love my Dwarf (sounds kind of funny ) already over everything and would not want to give him away anymore.
