iPhone podcast UI is incrementing towards "good"
By Eddie Lopez. Thursday, 18. June 2009, 15:55:49
Anyone who's been around this site for awhile (all three of you) knows that I have a long standing series of beefs with Apple on how they handle podcasts on the iPod/iPhone. In summation- Apple initially treated the UI for podcasts very much like that for music/songs and have subsequently updated with a series of patches and band-aids to compensate that slowly increment towards a passable podcast UI.
Apple's new iPhone software includes another one of these fixes that is likely spurned on by the same issues I brought up in my previous post on this topic- the seek and slider functions are terrible ways to get around a podcast track. So, they've provided a very welcome "30 second" rewind function. Also gone are the shuffle and repeat functions, which didn't make a lot of sense for podcasts in my opinion anyway (more music thinking transposed to podcasts)
It's welcome, but I still consider this a patch. We now have three different ways on the same screen to move around the track: Seek, slider, and 30 seconds. More UI equals more decision points and more complication. I suppose it would be passable to do this, but as I pointed out before, the first two are pretty much worthless for long podcasts, the seek function is too clumsy and the slider is impossible to do anything with accuracy. The original iPod click wheel did a decent job of allowing you to move around the track with few problems, I had no issues with that interaction.
I feel like this whole podcast UI needs a "from scratch" redesign- perhaps my next related post will be a mockup of a series of ideas I've had over the years, since Apple seems to only pay enough attention to podcasts to add one small feature with each release that only slightly moves the bar forward.
Apple's new iPhone software includes another one of these fixes that is likely spurned on by the same issues I brought up in my previous post on this topic- the seek and slider functions are terrible ways to get around a podcast track. So, they've provided a very welcome "30 second" rewind function. Also gone are the shuffle and repeat functions, which didn't make a lot of sense for podcasts in my opinion anyway (more music thinking transposed to podcasts)
It's welcome, but I still consider this a patch. We now have three different ways on the same screen to move around the track: Seek, slider, and 30 seconds. More UI equals more decision points and more complication. I suppose it would be passable to do this, but as I pointed out before, the first two are pretty much worthless for long podcasts, the seek function is too clumsy and the slider is impossible to do anything with accuracy. The original iPod click wheel did a decent job of allowing you to move around the track with few problems, I had no issues with that interaction.
I feel like this whole podcast UI needs a "from scratch" redesign- perhaps my next related post will be a mockup of a series of ideas I've had over the years, since Apple seems to only pay enough attention to podcasts to add one small feature with each release that only slightly moves the bar forward.
WIDGETIZE
kmaage # 19. June 2009, 08:35
With the iPhone able to do that song wizard thing where it listens to what is playing on your radio and figures out what song it is, I would think Apple would be able to design a skip back button that intelligently repeats what you missed.
Here's why I think it's possible:
1) Humans need and want to hear something from the "beginning of the thought" if they missed something. We welcome the extra context. It aids in understanding the part we missed.
2) Human speech is full of "natural breaks" that could be analyzed. Volume differences, rhythm changes, silences, pitch rises and fall offs, etc.
3) If you jump back 3 seconds one time but 5.2 seconds a different time, no one is going to notice or care. Humans are terrible at perceiving time very precisely, so there is a lot of wiggle room without people complaining about an inconsistent interface.
4) Multiple presses can be quite useful, using a somewhat logarithmic scale, with longer jumps the more times you press it, since our idea of "that part" relates to bigger and bigger sections the further back we go, because we remember less of the details.
5) You could replace the seek buttons with this "intelligent skip," replace the slider with a information-only progress bar and simplify the interface immensly, solving the problem of the slider vs. volume to boot.
Eddie_Lopez # 21. June 2009, 04:23
I admit, as much as I keep calling their updates "band-aids" and kludges, I'm thinking along the same lines. Your points however, are rethinking this whole thing to a more user centered design.
Wonderful!
kmaage # 21. June 2009, 13:14
Anonymous # 22. June 2009, 22:51
i just want the shuffle button back. i used it all the time. and its gone, how do i set my playlist to shuffle, and by shuffle i mean 'random play' not the skip to another song type of shuffle the shake thing does.
Anonymous # 1. July 2009, 19:15
Only one change? You didn't mention
-- the great variable speed scrubbing added with the 3.0 update. After pressing the scrubbing (slider) handle, hold down finger, slide it down, for increasingly fine scrubbing speeds. Pretty much fixes the problem for long podcasts. Works for music and video too.
-- extending the playback speed changes from audiobooks to all podcasts.
Eddie_Lopez # 2. July 2009, 14:05
http://my.opera.com/usability/blog/2009/06/21/more-band-aids-from-apple-for-the-poorly-designed-iphone-podcast-ui
"Great" is a bit of an overstatement.
Anonymous # 20. September 2009, 19:08
So, how about a 30-second fast forward?