Music Software & Interface Design: MuseScore

Alternately, if you want to go on the same journey Keary (the person you mention) went on to form an opinion on what constitutes good vs. bad UX design in music/notation/DAW software, they've also put out a whole series of videos taking the piss out of the UX of most of the software in the field: - Reason (link) - Sibelius (link) - MuseScore (▶ this video) - Dorico (link)

That's very much it. You could also make an analogy to the arts of typography and typesetting. It's of the same importance to a composer or musician that the notation is legible and beautiful, as it is to a graphic designer or reader that type and layout are legible and beautiful. If the GP is interested in the topic, there are great videos by Tantacrul on his experience redesigning the notation font for MuseScore [0] and his overview of MuseScore 4.0's engraving improvements [1] - in particular this second video, concerning mainly layout, shows just how far this CSS approach would have to go to have a truly legible, reflowable layout in the face of beams/slurs/ties. (I don't want to take away from anyone on the Sibelius team, they're likely even better experts on the subject than Tantacrul is, but as far as I know, they didn't make long-form Youtube videos about the topic! He also likely got the job of leading the MuseScore redesign thanks to his previous videos that critiqued and reimagined the interfaces of music composition software... including older versions of Sibelius [2] and MuseScore [3]) [0] link [1] link [2] link [3] ▶ this video

Musescore is usable but isn't great. I haven't used lilypond, but I'm sure lilypond is miles better. The focus of musescore has changed over the past year or two, all triggered by a funny youtube sh*tpost criticizing its UI (it was one series of such videos taking shots at all the big notation programs). ▶ this video The guy who created it is a trifecta: a composer, a typographer, and UI expert. The team at musescore took the criticism in good humor, and hired the creator of the video (Tantacrul, aka Martin Keary) to help them change it. The first phase was getting rid of some low-hanging fruit in the UI department. That work is ongoing. The main focus of the next phase (musescore 4.0) is the quality of the layout. Some of those improvements already landed in musescore 3.6.

For those out of the loop: Tantacrul is a composer who put together some hilariously scathing UI/UX video reviews for some popular composing software tools out there, including MuseScore [1] [2] [3]. The team developing MuseScore then brought him on as head of design. [1] Sibelius: link [2] MuseScore: ▶ this video [3] Dorico: link

I agree. GUIs are hard! On the other hand, it seems like Open Source has a lack of designers that are willing to contribute. For example, in Tantacrul's critique of MuseScore [0], there's issues highlighted that seem obvious in retrospect, but in Open Source projects, unless there's someone who drives the user experience, it's easy to miss all these small things that add up to signal (whether rightly or wrongly is besides the point) a lack of polish. [0] ▶ this video