Interview with the author DaisyDisk
Makradar Technologies / / December 19, 2019
In March this year we told About the program DaisyDiskThat visualizes the mounted disk as a visual pie chart. With the help of the application user finally know where disappearing disk space.
Since first publication took a long time, DaisyDisk was known abroad (publication were TUAW, Mac App Storm et al. popular poppy-blogs), and recently became available a beta version DaisyDisk 1.4. A good occasion to talk with Taras Brizitski, one of the authors of the program.
Tell a little about yourself
My name is Taras, I live in the small town of Sarov (former Arzamas-16), that in the Nizhny Novgorod region, already 7 years engaged in the design of interfaces.
How did the idea of creating DaisyDisk born? Was a need for such a utility, you either personally or someone from the friends suggested the idea? We examined whether there are other options (regular skrinshotilka or task manager, of which there is already a lot). In general, where the project started?
With a home library :)
It just so happens that my music / video collection for many years has grown in volume and gradually migrated from CD / DVD discs to a hard drive, the volume of which space began to decline dramatically fast. That is hundreds of gigabytes suddenly found themselves crammed a virtual machine image, old ripami DVD movies, podcasts, or wandering from one computer to archive / backup. Separate the wheat from the chaff in a similar situation can be difficult: for example, in the Downloads folder is often located tens of gigabytes of garbage mixed in with the necessary data, do not delete it entirely as... Finder helps here if it is not strong. Find an adequate tool for solving the problem "must quickly release the 10 GB" failed
Tell us about the process of creating a program? How long it took? Have you encountered some difficulties, or maybe interesting moments?
Development actually started at the end of 2008, with a small sketch, which I tried to explain Oleg (the programmer) the main ideas of the future application. A few weeks later we had a bunch of semi-workers of prototypes, and in March 2009 we released version 1.0. application concept has changed several times, we're pretty We experimented a lot with graphics (not always successfully), but by the time DaisyDisk release, which we then called DISKSPACE, already cool like that you see now. I would like to mention the fact that the latest available version is much faster, more convenient and more stable than those that we have released in the beginning of the year :)
Difficulties were indeed. For example, to create animations, Oleg had long enough to smash his head, deciding to heap geometric brainteasers, which number only increased to 2.0 (which we plan to release mid-2010) ...
Taras, tell us about the process of designing the interface. You have, I hope, survived early sketches. It would be interesting to show the reader the way, who have done :)
I posted on Flickr the whole pack Early screenshots and sketches Daisy, by which one can trace the development of early versions of the application, in which the exterior changes were most noticeable.
As for the design, then all is simple: moving forward in small steps we are continually improving the product, polishing his appearance and behavior. Not without obvious blunders: a significant portion of the literature on the use of sunburst (pie chart, we use) I "mastered" just the time of release, so that several times had to invent bike. However, due to the fact that the iteration (after the end of the discussion until ready build) was typically not more than a day (often at all in ten minutes) we quite quickly moved forward, swinging clearly unsustainable ideas.
You have decided to make an application for Mac OS X, not Windows, though poppies market is not so big. Why did you choose the way an apple?
Oleg initially I offered to write an application for Windows, but I was able to explain to him the advantages of developing the Mac. For example, Mac-users are more accustomed to buying software than use "alternative" licenses, and graphics capabilities of OS X is much higher than that of Windows. Considerable advantage became free XCode and high quality libraries and development tools. Plus they have had experience in designing Windows applications wanted to try to do something and the Mac, users are known for their love of good interfaces.
DaisyDisk - shareware-program, ie After the test period for the continued use of applications you have to pay. We do not fear that already have free analogues on the market?
Not. Moreover, it was part of the experiment: We wanted to see whether can intelligently designed app sold in such conditions.
«Free analogues" notable not only for zero price, but also the quality of zero, so that everyone chooses: to suffer with another student crafts (abandoned a few years ago), or use the convenient high-quality tool. Unlike WhatSize, for example, we do not impose any restrictions on the functional demo version, so that the user at least has nothing to lose.
DaisyDisk in a short time managed to become quite popular and very well-known tool. About your design wrote TUAW, Mac App Storm et al. It can be assumed that there was a lot of feedback from users. And was there any benefit? Whether offered interesting ideas?
The benefits, of course, was. If not for reviews, we would hardly have guessed that DaisyDisk can be used, for example, broadcasters and system administrators of large companies. Plus part of the improvements in the latest versions DaisyDisk appeared thanks to users' requests.
DaisyDisk included in the lists the most beautiful applications. So the question to Taras as UI author - why Russia is quite unimportant things with user intereysom applications? Even large companies produce products that can not be used. How to rectify the situation?
I would not say that all so bad in Russia. We have plenty of good people who create great interface. For example, look at the services of Yandex on FineReader (not the one under Mac :), work studio Gorbunova, UIDesign Group, UI Modeling ...
Another thing that frank schlock like paragonovskogo SlovoEd enough. There is unlikely that anything will change until then, until the heads of some companies depart from the principle of "People hawala". Here one should not underestimate the possibility of voting ruble :)
Thanks for answers. :) In the end, if you wish, you can add readers to NG. :)
Good luck in the new year! Read makradar :)