Here we’ll take a quick peek at the very high-level process of creating the interface design for a Signal Processing application. The main goal of this application is to digitally analyze, manipulate, convert and extract data from analogue signals.

In a nutshell, this application is used to view the signal, apply filters/effects, and export data.

We need an Interface that is:
- Aimed at Amateur / semi-professionals
- Allows for quick edits and analysis without requiring too much processing power
- Lightweight
- Intuitive interface

We’ll be talking about Visual style only; stuff that happens in the background and that makes this application actually work is for another day.

Let’s explore a bit:

As you can see, there are a lot of various audio, sound, and signal processing applications out there. It helps to be familiar with how these applications work, the workflow within this type of an app; this will help us develop the best approach to the user workflow and experience throughout the application.

Let’s start initial brainstorming of the app window layout.

A few things to keep in mind:
- Ease of use, fast workflow
- Legibility, clear and clean layout, which greatly helps with the smooth workflow

Here’s the high-level user workflow:

Some initial sketches exploring various interface layouts:

The one with Node Boxes looks promising, let's explore that route further:

The idea of using Nodes is interesting, i can see a few advantages over standard, waveform-focused view:
- Focus on the Processing flow, rather than Waveform view
- Ease of moving / editing filters and effects
- Easy to use window layout

Looks like we've established the top level layout. Fast forward, we'll think about the visual style (again, these are initial, high-level explorations)