User Centered

I suppose the product design team and testers over at Apple have "casual day" all during the week- or at least they don't rock the super cool "no tie" dress shirt like this business casual author is prone to do.

I say this because anyone who's spent any time with a)iPhone headphones and b) a collar would notice that the headphone "clicker" is perfectly designed to catch on the edge of my collar every time I turn my head.

How about you smooth over that hard edge Apple?

It's taken a few years and many revisions, but iTunes has blossomed into a product that answers most of the issues addressed in earlier postings regarding podcast management/use. I'm still interested in podcasts and making the experience better- so I'm going to keep on keepin' on and focus on some of the finer details of the iPhone's UI when dealing with podcasts.


Look at these two pictures. The first is a podcast being played with the phone unlocked, the second is the same with the phone locked and the iPod functions activated (you can double tap the home button to turn on iPod controls while locked)

The most interesting design decision is the location of the volume function. While unlocked, it's the slider along the bottom of the screen, and the slider on the top part of the screen is for seeking into the track being played. When it's locked, however, the volume slider moves up to the top, in pretty much the same location as the seek function. Result? Annoyance...when I first started using the iPhone, I would try to seek the last part of a podcast and end up blasting my ears instead. It doesn't help that the controls look exactly the same.

Another design decision of note is actually using the slider for podcasts. I know I just used the last paragraph to knock the iPhone for being inconsistent, but music and podcasts are different. This slider makes pretty good sense for a 3-4 minute song, but podcasts are hour long tracks. A slight tick of the slider can be a minute or so- and spoken word is more difficult than music to seek, since you don't have a melody/context to place what you're currently hearing. Result? A useless slider function. (unless you're trying to get to "the halfway point" or "2/3rds" of the way through)

Finally, (and this is more hardware related) the modal next/previous tracks- because the track slider is almost useless to me when I want to "rehear" an interesting part of a podcast, I have to hold down the "previous" button to rewind. I wouldn't have a terribly big problem with this if the software/hardware for these particular functions weren't so finicky. It turns out, when I hold the button down, a significant (daily) number of times the hardware isn't registering a touch at all, and because the buttons is modal (hold or press), that slight 1 second delay before anything happens is always frustrating because I'm not sure if the phone has registered my finger press, or if I have to try it again. I look down at the buttons to see if it has the white "glow" indicating it's activated. And you guessed it...this battle often ends up in me pressing, instead of holding the button and restarting the track and having to seek into it (see first paragraph)

So, what can be done? Here's some thoughts:

• First, why not keep the volume in the same place throughout the UI? In the first screenshot, it seems more reasonable to locate the seek/track slider with the next/previous buttons anyway since the functions are related,and the volume could go on top.
  
• Next, why not offer a more precise control for moving through long tracks? I missed the iPod scroll wheel, but how about a zoomed (ala the OS X dock) slider?
  
• I know simplicity is a religion at Apple (that's an upcoming post btw), but you have a dynamic interface which you fully control, why so much ambiguity and modal controls on a virtual interface? (see:"bad idea for a software interface" for more thoughts) Would it be detrimental to the UI to add a seperate seek button?
  
• In both the previous bullets, I'd even accept a gesture interface to seek- maybe the number of fingers you use to swipe could indicate the time increments you seek by- one finger is seconds, two fingers is 10 seconds and three seconds could be minutes or something.
  

'Bout time something like this came around! This always seemed like the best way to solve this problem:


(via Gizmodo)

"Again with the iTunes..." you say. Look, it's simple- we're overly critical of those we love.

But today it's more of question than anything.. I'd like to solicit you for feedback on what you think of the iTunes rating system, or rating of music libraries in general.

This system seems to match basically what I've seen everyone else do.. including myself:

Five stars: OH MY GOD I LOVE THIS SONG PLAY IT OVER AND OVER!!!
Four stars: This song is really good. I could listen to it pretty regularly.
Three stars: This song is good.
Two stars: Ehhhh … skip.
One star: Never play this song again!

...the difference being that some folks will simply delete or uncheck the songs that would never be played again, but more or less, this is pretty standard.

Most of these same people (including myself) also seem to agree that their own ratings are never accurate. So, like I always do with my posts, I'd like to go back to "activity centered" ..which, in this case, is more "genre" or "mood" centered.

Five stars arrive as such based on the current mood you're in, or other songs you've listened to. Or the fact that this is a new album you've bought, so certainly, you think it's got some good licks on it yeah? But there's a myriad of contexts and conditions in which you'd consider a certain artist/song (like say Sade) a five star (like say... when you're entertaining the ladies), but not in other contexts (like say.. when you're hosting a BBQ). As a result, I've almost completely abandoned the arduous task (ok- I'm exaggerating.. it's really not bad) of rating any of my music.

Why?

I thought you'd never ask. Basically, I'd like to have more granularity in my ratings. Others have suggested a 10 star scale, but but really wouldn't solve any problem. What I think needs to be done is context aware rating. We've reserved our highest ratings for the uber, top notch, always appropriate, never wrong song....and quite frankly, there's just not any songs that I have that meet that. A five star song from my "mellow" playlist does not equal a five star song on my "running" playlist. So we bump them down to fours, or come up with some other kludge... even though when I'm mid stride after two miles, nothing says "five star" like "Bulls on Parade"


But iTunes *does* do that!
True. You can edit a smart playlist like such to get your highest rated by playlist or genre*:


...Here comes my question: Is this what *you* do? How do you do your music ratings? Do you think (like I do) that five star songs are really dependent on the context in which you're thinking? Or do you really have songs that would be your first up to bat regardless of the time, setting, mood, etc.. I have a few of those songs as well, but they are generally short lived- high rotation for short periods of time (like a new song that I burn out on quickly). These are fives, but get dropped to three or twos in a matter of weeks.

What thoughts do you have on library ratings that are useful?


*Ok, bad example... this would return an empty playlist because certain 80's bands would suck all other 80's songs down into the 1 star range. Guilt by association and all that. I'm looking at you Journey.

I imbibe the vast majority of my digital music during my workouts. When I first got my iTunes/iPod all setup on my PC, one of the very first things I did was search the iMixes for a good sampling of "workout music." Sure I had my own music I enjoy... and even a good number of it is upbeat and fast paced, but in general, the kind of music I would run too needs to just help pace me and keep me going. I'm not looking to be the next American Idol while I'm jogging through my neighborhood.

My first thought was: "Surely folks like say...workout instructors would have put up a good iMix on iTunes by now?" (incidently, my second thought was: "no they don't, and don't call me Shirley") But I never really found anything there (this was in Sep 04 and occasionally thereafter- I'm sure you could find an imix or two there now that meets this criteria, but it's still like 'Thunderdome' out there I'm sure). I would have thought it was common sense to be able to see a playlist of songs like "30 minutes running music" or playlists from the fitTV show: "Cardio Boot Camp with Kendell Hogan" ...something along those lines.

I guess the long and short of all this is that I viewed working out/running as a significant activity used with my music player and I was slightly surprised that there was not enough...what I'll call "pushing" in that direction. Apart from the stopwatch, elastic armband and a few other 3rd party gadgets- there really didn't seem to be a lot of focus on using and encouraging physical activity. More surprising since a casual glance at the gym goers shows that most of them have a music player of some sort.

So this Nike/Apple thing (read about it here-Apple.com) seems like it's been long overdue. I'm not sure how gimmicky this whole idea is, but a quick look at the sync page shows that Apple and Nike are being clever at really supporting this activity.

First- they make progress tracking Drop Dead Simple. I'd think the reason most of are thinkg "eh, so what, I'd never use it..." is because it's always a hassle, or extra devices or configuration is necessary. Maybe you'd need an excel spreadsheet or some custom piece of software. All you have to do in this case is just sync you iPod up. From what I can tell, your data is sync'd with Nike's website, so you don't have to pay attention to it at all until you are actually interested in seeing your progress. Simple- I'm not sure what hassle's and hoops you have to jump through to use the Nike website (as I don't want to register) but it appears to be pretty simple to use (albeit overly flashy). You're already going to sync your ipod, and you're already taking it to the gym. You just have to put some gizmo in your shoe, and you're off!

Second is the iTunes music store support. I'm finally seeing an abundance of choice in helping to build a good playlist for your jog:

• Sport iMixes: Professionally selected playlists designed to motivate you through the most demanding workouts.
  
• Athlete Inspirations: Playlists chosen and introduced by top athletes.
  
• Continuous Workout Mixes: Workout routines developed for use with Nike+iPod time- or distance-based workouts. Each routine offers coaching, motivational, and training tips over a continuous mix of music.
  

Regardless of how successful or useful all this is, it's still interesting to see them thinking and supporting how people use their products. Maybe I'm in the minority, but this has always seemed like a lost opportunity to help your customers (until now).


Update: Here's a MS version of this idea- but of course, being the "User Centered" blog, I'd have to say this MS offering looks like too much. I just liked the simplicity of the Apple/Nike setup. Although Jeff, this kinda looks like it has the other feature I was telling you about: (everyone else just gets to imagine)

selecting and playing music with specific features that will encourage the user to speed up, slow down or keep the pace to be on track with his/her exercise goals.

(update via gizmodo)