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.
WIDGETIZE