The central section of the create window, where all the settings are located, has become quite chaotic and a daily source of confusion for us, even after months of using Udio. While it has an appealing design and functions adequately, its overall usability and ergonomics leave much to be desired. A significant overhaul is necessary! What may have worked in the beginning no longer meets our needs as the software has evolved. It's important to remember that programmers are not necessarily designers, and improvements are always possible—sometimes drastically so—if we simply take the time to explore. We recognize that as the software has expanded and additional settings have been added, a restructuring is now essential. This situation is impacting our focus, our time and even our eyes.

Key Issues Identified:

Vertical Length and Overview: The current layout requires often some scrolling, is too long to fit the whole screen, leading to a lack of overview, even on larger displays.

Lack of Visual Separation: Uniformity in color makes it hard to distinguish between different sections, causing confusion.

Placement of Important Settings: Key settings are buried, which hampers efficiency and workflow.

Crowded Sections: Different types of settings are grouped together, leading to information overload.

Confusing Expand/Collapse Functionality: The controls for expanding and collapsing sections of the menu are kind of non-intuitive.

Suggested Improvements:

a) Reduce Vertical Space: Making the fields smaller would allow for more information to be visible at once, reducing the amount of scrolling required.

b) Add Visual Distinctions: Implementing colored frames or even different background colors for sections can enhance visual navigation by quickly guiding the user’s eye to relevant settings (the colors could be set individually in the preferences).

c) Reorganization of Settings:

Top Priority Settings: Place the most frequently used settings (AI model, seed, and clip length) at the top, ideally in a non-expandable format, for quick access. Best in a single row. Under this settings I would display the waveform for remix/trim/crop/expand.

The waveform for inpaint I would place near the lyrics sections since they work together.

Consider that expanding sections takes also a bit of time.

Audio Quality Settings: Group audio-related settings (quality, clarity) together while keeping them expandable, given that these are less frequently changed.

Song Generation Parameters: Follow with settings that influence song creation (clip start, prompt and lyrics strengths etc).

Lyric-related settings: Place them to the bottom. Specially because the lyrics window can get longer. And sometimes is the only thing you want to work at. The waveform for inpaint I would place before this section or under it.

And some extra features essential to have:

Seed Display: Always display the seed of the previous generation at the top, making a text copy possible, eliminating thus the need to navigate through menus to access this frequently required information.

Right sided column: In the song list, some important information is missing (we need more details about the song) and some fast access buttons like "Edit Title", "Download Song" , and a 3-5 stars for rating the songs. This star rating is only for the user, not to be displayed public as the heart it is now. It is only to help us rate the song we produce for further editing/extending.

Expected Outcomes:

Implementing these suggestions could significantly enhance the usability and functionality of the settings window. Improving the usability and functionality of the settings window is crucial for attracting and retaining users.

A more intuitive interface would likely lead to improved user satisfaction, efficiency, and overall workflow, which is particularly valuable for users who engage with the software regularly.

Thanks for reading!