ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[Victor Thompson <victor.thompson@xxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks for the constructive criticism, Chris. I'm one of the developers
working on the app--so I'll try to respond to each of your points.

On Fri, Mar 28, 2014 at 7:51 AM, Chris K <oneleggedracer@xxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hi.
>
> I am just a fan that has a N4 running UT on it.  I play with it here and
> there to see how things are progressing.
> On the whole, I'm liking the OS.  There are a few things that prevent me
> from being able to really dogfood if for you all (e.g. no data because
> there is no way to put in an APN.  If you can put in the ability to edit
> APN's, then I can do more for you.)
>
> This email is pretty long and I hope that it serves as some sort of
> constructive feedback for the Music App.  The music app is pretty bad for
> usability.  I say this as an Information Architect with over 10 years
> dedicated experience.  I often need to put myself into the mind of a
> beginning user to think about how a newbie would interact with an
> application.  In the case of the music app, even I as a "power user" cannot
> really figure it out.
>
> I don't want to just complain without at least offering to help out.  I
> know that you have a lot of UI specialists at Cannonical so I don't want to
> spend my time thinking through solutions if it is stepping on other peoples
> toes.
>
> There are a few things I would like to point out:
>
> - OS level  interactions should not break or be removed on an
> application.  Bottom Up Slide has always triggered the back button.  This
> cannot change because of a playbar.  I need my back button to be always in
> the same place.
>

The "Bottom Up Slide" reveals application specific controls in each of the
Ubuntu applications. There is currently no OS level back button, but this
may be changing in the future. As such, there aren't any OS level
interactions being broken or removed for the sake of the "playbar".


>
> - Recent doesn't seem to populate often.  When I am exploring this app, I
> need it to do exactly what I expect, and when I see that Recent is blank,
> even after I have listened to 10 songs already, that's not good.  I lose
> faith and trust.  Trust is the most important thing.
>

Recent populates from playing an Album or Playlist from the designated
views for each of these items. It currently is not populated when the user
plays a song from the phone's Dash, or when different tracks are actually
played within the queue/Now Playing page. The reason for this, at a high
level, is that we didn't want to overload the recent list with single
songs. Parts of this will be redone gradually as we add other ways to play
common or favorite songs.


>
> - On the OS level, Home > Applications > Music....
>    Showing a few songs in there using big icons isnt very productive.  I
> think a list would be much better in this case, or not showing them at
> all.  perhaps show something much higher up such as "Albums, Artists,
> Recent", etc.  Eventually, people will have hundreds or thousands of songs
> on their device.  I see no reason to select 6 at random (or whatever the
> logic is)
>

This is the Music scope, which is separate from the app. I agree, though.
This was the same reasoning for how the Music app puts Albums and Playlists
in the recent list and not songs. I'm sure the Music scope developers will
be enhancing the layout as the platform proceeds.


>
> - After clicking on a song title from the launcher
>   Why take me to a screen that shows the song again?  Why not just play
> it?  What are people expecting?
>   Why show me what seems to be two ways to play it?  Big play button, and
> then what seems to be a smaller play button below it in the text
>

This is also the Music scope. I think the general behavior of many of the
scopes may be a little too prone to show the user a preview of the item
they are looking at. I think what the Music scope should do should be
similar to the App scope. Clicking on the track plays it in the player, and
long pressing the track brings up the current preview screen.


> - Reliability - I just played a video and now I cannot get any music to
> play.  Must be a bug?  I am rebooting now as I type this.
>

Feel free to report bugs you find in Launchpad.net. I'm not sure what would
cause music playback to fail in this manner.


>
> - Music landing page (from the icon in launcher).  Why start with recent +
> genres.  Again, after reboot, there is only one there.  Do people want to
> click on Genres as their main thing?  I'd research this via user labs.  I
> know I don't but I won't speak for the general population based on a
> personal preference
>

My general use case, personally, is also not to use genres for selecting
what I want to play. The placement of "Genres" so prominently on the start
screen was a decision by the Canonical design team. I defend this decision,
however, because it does appear that many people who casually use the
device select their music this way. The team has added a similar list of
Albums to this page, in part because we felt the same way.


>
> - Horizontal slide navigation.  It's not terribly obvious to slide
> horizontally to see more genres.  A noob wouldnt obviously know to slide
> horizontally.  Even then, two at a time is a big limiting factor to this
> nav system.  How can I navigate hundreds of items two at a time?
>

Eventually, these horizontal views will have a 'carousel' effect that
should make the interaction more obvious and also fit more content on the
screen.


>
> - Artists. You will need a better system here. List items are too tall.
> It will take forever to scroll.  Also, you need an alphabet style link way
> of getting downt he list fast.
>

The team has implemented a search feature (slide up, expose the HUD, and
select "Search"), which, while not very discoverable, is relatively useful.
I agree, however, that a better system for navigating the long list views
is desirable.


> - Clicking on an artist.  I see <author> <# of albums> <# of songs>.  I
> click on it, and get basically the same information on the next screen.
> This needs to change more.  Show me details here, not the same basic
> information.    Why do I need to click again to get basic details?
>

The initial view is a list of albums, and the secondary view is a list of
tracks for that album. I agree that the initial view should make it easier
to play or queue one of the albums. Would you mind filing a bug at
https://bugs.launchpad.net/music-app ?


>
> - Clicking on the song down arrow.  I'd swear that I clicked on the down
> arrow, and not the song name.  instead of giving me more info, it played
> the song.
>
> - When the song is playing.  You guys stole my back button.  I have no
> idea what to do to go back.  This song is playing unexpectedly, and I don't
> know what to do
>

The inverted caret symbol at the top of the view is the back button. I
agree it's not very discoverable. This will be changing once the UI team
implements the back button inside the header of the page.


> - Sliding to clear a playing song.  What does this do?  Why would I
> "clear" this song?
>

That clears the track from the queue. This is a pretty standard pattern to
remove items--I doubt it will change in the future.


>
> - Break: I have a big white bar on the top of my screen.  I am sure it's a
> bug, but I don't know how to clear it.
>

That's a known bug, which should also be fixed once the back button is
placed in the Header.


>
> - Clicking on image.  This pauses the song and triggers the bottom area to
> expand.  That's not great either.  Yes it exposes new controls, but why
> aren't those controls always visible?  Show me another player that doesnt
> have stop/start always visible.  And "next".
>

This was done to allow more content to be shown on the screen. Swiping up
brings up the controls in most of the views of the app--just as it does in
all the other Ubuntu apps.


>
> - On player, clickng the down arrow on a song.  Why does this expose an
> "Add to playlist" action?  It's next in line as it is, won't it just play
> next?
>
>
You are looking at the queue. Playlists are a saved set of songs the user
can recall at any later time. The queue is ever changing. This is common
terminology used in most of the music players I've seen. Please file a bug
if you strongly otherwise.


>
> I'm going to stop the feedback here because I don't want this to sound
> like a giant complaint-fest. UT does a lot of things well, and sorry to the
> person/people that designed the music app for such a lot of negative
> feedback.  It is honestly going to be tough to drop complicated
> applications into an OS that uses all 4 sides of the screen already.  you
> are limited to the number of secondary actions you can put inside the
> bottom bar.  <BACK> must be one of them though.  I am sure this will be a
> recurring problem for more complicated apps.  I guess in short, I think we
> are starting to see some of the limitations of this type of UI and how it
> scales to really complex situations.  When you design, you must always ask
> the question "What is the worst case scenario for the number of items".
> Future needs will lend itself to thousands and thousands of songs, hundreds
> of genres, hundreds of authors.  It will be tough to scale this model.
>

I thank you for the feedback! Interactions are always difficult to get
right, especially when the platform has slightly different patterns for
various edges, and whatnot. Keep an eye on these things though--they will
be ever evolving.

Respectfully,

Victor Thompson


>
> If you want me to brainstorm with your IA's, or work on this further, i'd
> be willing to.  If not, I leave it to your professionals to re-work this
> application in time.
>
> PS:  please put APN control into the OS so I can actually dogfood this
> device more.  If there is a tutorial on how to do this, please point me the
> way to it.
>
> Chris
>
>
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