Media Device UI Suggestions
09-16-2014, 10:39 PM
#1
Burning Brakes
Thread Starter
Media Device UI Suggestions
Just blowing off some steam here with observations about navigating through songs on a USB stick or SD card media device for audio. These aren't bugs, they are just examples of things that could have been designed and implemented better.
Some of my observations and opinions are only annoying or evident with very large libraries of music. And it's a given that one can circumvent the problems by simply hooking in an external media player such as an iPod. That's not the issue. It's not that there is no way to work around the annoyances or alternately get the desired functionality, I'm just saying it would be nice if we didn't have to. I like the integrated nature of the full built-in infotainment system all working together.
1) The phantom playlist problem. It took quite some digging and experimentation from early users on this forum to figure out why some playlists showed up in the on-screen list and some didn't. Turned out that if a playlist contains a song with special characters in the title, the system simply ignores the playlist. There is no warning, no indication of why the playlist has disappeared. Put the problem in a screen-accessible log file. Or show the playlist grayed out and unselectable on the screen. Or make the playlist selectable, but skip the problematic song. Anything but pretending it isn't there without an explanation!
2) The repeating songs problem. We see this one submitted on the forum from new owners all the time. They don't remember that they browsed by artist or album or genre. Then they can't figure out why the system just keeps playing one or a few songs over and over. The screen should tell you when you are in a subset category. "Now playing ALBUM X" or "Now playing ARTIST Y" or something to indicate the currently applied filter.
3) The scrolling problem. When scrolling through long lists, the tiny index letters along the vertical left are very difficult to hit with a fat finger, especially when driving. Scrolling the list using the up and down scroll bar arrows is painfully slow. Push. Wait for response. Push again. Roughly 10-15 songs at a time (approximate... I'm writing from memory). I am now over 8000 songs on my USB stick, so I cannot use voice commands to select a song and I am forced to use the on-screen controls. It is maddening. Digital player makers figured out that you need a manual dial of some sort to quickly scroll back and forth through long lists. We need one as well. Repurposing the hardware skip-forward and skip-back buttons might work. Just remap their functionality when a scroll list is displayed.
4) The duplicate title problem. Good luck selecting the version of the song you want if you have multiple ones with the same title. If you have different cover versions or album versions of the same song, all you see is the same title listed multiple times. You cannot see any detail info before selecting the song for playback, which means if you got it wrong, you have to bring up the list again, scroll to the right location, and try another of the duplicated titles at random. It would be really nice to be able to select a supplementary info display that tells you artist/album while keeping you in list display mode.
5) The "play more like this" problem. My most common listening mode is everything on the device, shuffled at random. If something comes up that I like, I might want to play more from that artist or album or genre. I have to go back to the primary browse mode and start my selection process from scratch. It would be very convenient to press the display on the album name, artist name, or genre name and have the system switch to browse mode with that filter applied. Similarly, if I am inside a category filter and press the song title on the "now playing" display, it could switch me back to "browse songs" mode with the given song title selected for play. That would let me easily listen to additional versions of the same song.
6) The mute/pause problem. There is an entire thread dedicated to forum members arguing about this! I fall into the camp that says on a dedicated audio device without a hardware pause button, the hardware mute button should pause the playing song as well. There is no practical use case for letting a song continue to play even though you can't hear it.
7) The reindexing problem. The system should keep a checksum or other quick-check algorithm that tells it whether content has changed on the physical device and needs to be reindexed. It would be a nice user convenience if the media screen display could indicate that indexing is in progress (it needs two progress indicators... One for being able to browse via screen selection and the second much longer indexing process for voice browsing).
Some of my observations and opinions are only annoying or evident with very large libraries of music. And it's a given that one can circumvent the problems by simply hooking in an external media player such as an iPod. That's not the issue. It's not that there is no way to work around the annoyances or alternately get the desired functionality, I'm just saying it would be nice if we didn't have to. I like the integrated nature of the full built-in infotainment system all working together.
1) The phantom playlist problem. It took quite some digging and experimentation from early users on this forum to figure out why some playlists showed up in the on-screen list and some didn't. Turned out that if a playlist contains a song with special characters in the title, the system simply ignores the playlist. There is no warning, no indication of why the playlist has disappeared. Put the problem in a screen-accessible log file. Or show the playlist grayed out and unselectable on the screen. Or make the playlist selectable, but skip the problematic song. Anything but pretending it isn't there without an explanation!
2) The repeating songs problem. We see this one submitted on the forum from new owners all the time. They don't remember that they browsed by artist or album or genre. Then they can't figure out why the system just keeps playing one or a few songs over and over. The screen should tell you when you are in a subset category. "Now playing ALBUM X" or "Now playing ARTIST Y" or something to indicate the currently applied filter.
3) The scrolling problem. When scrolling through long lists, the tiny index letters along the vertical left are very difficult to hit with a fat finger, especially when driving. Scrolling the list using the up and down scroll bar arrows is painfully slow. Push. Wait for response. Push again. Roughly 10-15 songs at a time (approximate... I'm writing from memory). I am now over 8000 songs on my USB stick, so I cannot use voice commands to select a song and I am forced to use the on-screen controls. It is maddening. Digital player makers figured out that you need a manual dial of some sort to quickly scroll back and forth through long lists. We need one as well. Repurposing the hardware skip-forward and skip-back buttons might work. Just remap their functionality when a scroll list is displayed.
4) The duplicate title problem. Good luck selecting the version of the song you want if you have multiple ones with the same title. If you have different cover versions or album versions of the same song, all you see is the same title listed multiple times. You cannot see any detail info before selecting the song for playback, which means if you got it wrong, you have to bring up the list again, scroll to the right location, and try another of the duplicated titles at random. It would be really nice to be able to select a supplementary info display that tells you artist/album while keeping you in list display mode.
5) The "play more like this" problem. My most common listening mode is everything on the device, shuffled at random. If something comes up that I like, I might want to play more from that artist or album or genre. I have to go back to the primary browse mode and start my selection process from scratch. It would be very convenient to press the display on the album name, artist name, or genre name and have the system switch to browse mode with that filter applied. Similarly, if I am inside a category filter and press the song title on the "now playing" display, it could switch me back to "browse songs" mode with the given song title selected for play. That would let me easily listen to additional versions of the same song.
6) The mute/pause problem. There is an entire thread dedicated to forum members arguing about this! I fall into the camp that says on a dedicated audio device without a hardware pause button, the hardware mute button should pause the playing song as well. There is no practical use case for letting a song continue to play even though you can't hear it.
7) The reindexing problem. The system should keep a checksum or other quick-check algorithm that tells it whether content has changed on the physical device and needs to be reindexed. It would be a nice user convenience if the media screen display could indicate that indexing is in progress (it needs two progress indicators... One for being able to browse via screen selection and the second much longer indexing process for voice browsing).
09-16-2014, 11:14 PM
#2
you can solve #4 by editing the title of the song. ive also done that to force it to play songs in specific
orders instead of the default alphabetical. that "feature" probably drives those who listen to classical
music nuts because the pieces of a symphony would be played out of order instead of the order on
the original media, which is of course they way they were composed.
orders instead of the default alphabetical. that "feature" probably drives those who listen to classical
music nuts because the pieces of a symphony would be played out of order instead of the order on
the original media, which is of course they way they were composed.
Last edited by Asterism; 09-16-2014 at 11:16 PM.
