Initial UI design feedback and discussion

[katestange]

This is some feedback on an initial figma design:

A few initial small thoughts:

1. I like the small 'restart/pause' pane being very visually separate from the other controls, hence noticeable, that feels intuitive to me
2. The way the controls are laid out for Change Sequence feels very intuitive to me -- a box for OEIS, and tabs for browse and saved, uses the standard user experience with things like tabs to make it easy to figure out
3. I love the floating panes feel. Do they collapse or hide when we don't want them?
4. I think maybe the big picture thing for me, though, is that the main pane has a tad bit of "airplane cockpit" feel because there are so many controls visible. In the chaos game, the controls are really spaced out so that it takes a lot of scrolling (perhaps bad) but it feels very gentle to approach (good). I think the benefits outweight the downsides with that. In fact, some instructions are shown around each control and the controls themselves are even downright clunky, but there's also lots of space for each button or option. I think this invites the user to play with each control before moving on to the next, in a thoughtful way. I think the clunkiness actually makes you want to use them. It may be that the framework should pull a small instruction sentence or two from the visualizer for each control. In general, I think this is a place where we could really distinguish ourselves. I've seen a lot of math apps where people have added tons and tons of exciting controls and there's just a huge panel full of sliders and drop-downs and you have no idea what any of them do -- if you're lucky you can open up documentation. I think something to aspire to is an interface that doesn't confuse, overwhelm, or require referencing docs. It allows the user to learn on the go. That's why I like the little pop up question marks, but I'd like to take that further and imbue the whole interface with an inviting exploration feel. So even starting with the "Sequence" panel, here's what I might ask:
   do we need modulus showing all the time? If so, maybe we should give it more space and an explanation like "Take the sequence modulo n (what's this?)" where you can interact with the "what's this?" to find a definition of modular arithmetic. And maybe the framework should require visualizers to list their parameters in order of approachability for a user, and display them in that order, with increasingly complex options only being apparent later in the user experience somehow

Some other small thoughts

1. note that the box for OEIS number in the Change Sequence panel might become a box for formulas that involve OEIS, or maybe we want two boxes, one for OEIS numbers, one for formulas

2. In "Frame 7", when the change sequence pops up, I would love to see that use a larger percentage of the screen, so more pictures can show

3. We could possibly maximize screen real-estate a bit more by making the footer thinner (all text on one line maybe) -- or maybe no footer at all? it attracts the eye without being important, since it's the brightest colour... and that colour may even clash or overwhelm a given visualizer perhaps. maybe I'd vote to get rid of it (maybe if the text is necessary it could float or something?)

4. Wordiness could be brought down in a couple places, e.g. in the Change Sequence, maybe "Saved Sequences" could just be "Saved", "Gallery of example specimens" could be "Specimen gallery"

5. I think maybe instead of "OEIS Sequence" the header should just be "Sequence".  Both for simplicity and because we will have other type of sequences, such as formulas the user enters.

6. Overall, I think the control panels still have a lot of lines, which feels slightly busy to me. Like the "sub"menus have a left line to indicate indent, and every entry area is a box

7. I like the circled question marks or something equivalent -- I assume this means you can mouseover to get instructions