User Centered

At the sake of making this a site dedicated to Apple's podcast UI management, I'd like to point out yet another change that came about with the 3.0 iPhone software update, but first, see the history of this topic on the site to get up to speed, also, Kenneth Maage's thoughts in the comments here are pretty insightful as well for a "how it should work" argument.

The scrubber (left-to-right slider) is very difficult to use with podcasts, and was a poor design decision.

...The fact that Apple added the 30 second rewind and the following scrubber fixes is enough evidence in the "user centered" court of law to state the above.

Well, 3.0 has another kludge up its sleeve that I stumbled upon. Now, when you place your finger on the scrubber a contextual message appears instructing you to pull your finger down to adjust the rate at which the scrubber will move through the track- the further you move your finger down, the slower it moves through the track. Let me paint you picture: You put your finger on the scrubber button, the message pops up, you drag your finger down and as you, the rate of movement through the podcast will slow down. You then move your finger left of right to move as normal, all this without picking up your finger.

There's a couple points of discussion here:

1. As I've said in the past- you have a dynamic, touchscreen UI, take advantage of that! They tried this with the gesturing, two dimensional scrubbing maneuver, but they still tie it to the traditional left/right scrubber!
   
2. ...which is the silly design decision here- we're moving an object at the top of the screen but our finger is positioned (in the case of "fine") nowhere near it! I think "kludge" is the kindest word I can come up with for how this interaction works. I'm all for having advanced features that are "value add" as long as they don't detract from the functionality of the product for those unaware (ex: Opera's mouse gestures); this attempts to be one of those, but considering the original functionality can hardly be called functional for anyone (advance or not) really makes me scratch my head.
   
3. Maybe I just need practice- but in actual use, I'm not sure this is all that useful. I found myself moving my finger up and down, left and right and losing the context of what I wanted to hear,...okay, this one is an anecdote, I retract it
   
4. ...but it's probably because they start out "fastest" and have you move your finger farther down the screen to get to the "slowest/finest" granularity. Of course, we're humans, and we can't move our limbs in precise, linear motions. The result is that as I'm moving my finger down to more finer granularity, there are slight movements to the left and right which cause the audio to jump around quite a bit (since they're higher speeds) and I'm "lost" before I finally get to the slower speeds. Keep in mind, the reason this was added was because the faster scrubs are worthless. It seems to me, that excusing all the previous points (ie- I wouldn't design it this way to begin with), it would make more sense to start out "fine" and drag your finger down to get higher speed scrubbing (the zoom out metaphor), but given the established UI expectations, this wouldn't make sense, you'd have to have a default fine scrub first.
   

I think I'll find some use of this feature, but I think it's mostly because I'm into these features much more than (I expect) the general population. I'll add it up to one more band-aid on an interface that is really starting to show it could use a "rethinking." It would be more useful if they ditched the "scrubber" widget on the screen and put something up that really conveyed this functionality. I'd suggest looking at kmaage's comments on the previous post for ideas on how to make these functions actually useful.

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.
  

Summary:

iTunes applies a blanket approach to podcast subscriptions that assumes they are all “consumed” in the same manner; it’s a music manager first that has been adopted for podcasts. It should instead embrace the many ways that audio is being published and subscribed to. One suggestion would be to move the concept of playlists over to podcasts and allow us to set download/sync options on playlists instead of each individual podcast. I'd *love* to hear suggestions of any software you know of that might meet my goals (Songbird, ODEO, Juice,ziePod, etc...)

This article is about an older version of iTunes. Many of the problems listed here have been addressed, maybe not as well as I'd like, but they're slowly working on it.

This is a rehash/revisit of an earlier article. I've just refined some thoughts a bit and incorporated some ideas from people who have posted and emailed me in response to the last article. If you read the old one, you can probably skip this. Also please note this has little to do with the iPod, or iTunes as a music manager. I love them!

But when it comes to podcasts, I'd like to see iTunes change. I *am* looking at other clients/managers that might work for me, but I want iTunes to go into rehab & get itself straightened up. Figure out what direction it wants to go in life and all that.

Read more...

Through trial and error, I've discovered that iTunes will only "Keep my music organized" if I do things...just...so. (note, this is the version that came installed on my wife's mac. Possibly old and possibly bug-fixed by now).

iTunes let me name tracks as the CD was being imported. Usability principle: Accommodate the user's desired task order. Well Done, Steve. So I figured it would Do The Right Thing in regards to filenames. If the system needed to import to some temporary file, that's fine, just make sure that you (the system) change the filename when you (the system) do have track information (from the user).

Nope.

If you name a track before the import of that track begins, it will be saved with the correct filename. If you name a track after a track is imported. Ha ha! All Will Be Lost(tm) and it will magically revert to "Track 1" the next time you start iTunes.

The principle here is that the underlying system state, filename = track name or filename != track name, is invisible to the user. To the user, changing the track name is changing the filename. Therefore, it's the system's responsibility to ensure displayed information matches the underlying system state at all times.

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)