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Apps Getting Worse

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Re: Apps Getting Worse

#161

Post by xmprt »

davmar wrote: post #149
sushisource wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope people will use Spotify as a case study in how to fuck up a UI over time. The service itself is fine, I quite like some of the music it finds for me on discover, but the UI is on a slow death march towards complete uselessness, and some features have always been hopelessly broken (queuing). From a business standpoint I find it fascinating. It's about as perfect as an example it gets of "if it ain't broke, don'…

We can only blame ourselves for Spotify's bad UI! (jk) Spotify uses an internal experimentation platform that guides which features they determine are successful, based upon how our usage moves their metrics: https://engineering.atspotify.com/2020/10/29/spotifys-new-ex... So, basically, the bad UI is improving their metrics. Or something. Maybe this is a case of experimentation gone wrong.

I can only assume one of their metrics is the classic "time on app" or "user engagement" which is a bullshit metric for a music player. If I'm spending more time on the app then that clearly means I'm not finding what I'm looking for.

Re: Apps Getting Worse

#162

Post by dmitriid »

na85 wrote: post #138
zozbot234 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OSS has the best designs, at least on the desktop. And it's becoming quite competitive in mobile and touch interfaces, too.

>OSS has the best designs, at least on the desktop. I guess you haven't used GIMP

I'll admit I haven't used in a long time. It's definitely been improving for a long time, but my recollection of it has always been as being somewhat messy.

Compare, say, to Affinity, Pixelmator, Procreate...

Re: Apps Getting Worse

#163

Post by kilroywashere »

Negitivefrags wrote: post #29

The worst offender recently in my opinion is Spotify on desktop. It used to be that when you clicked on an artists page you would see all the music tracks listed. Now it's all buried deep in and you have to search through the individual albums. Even the list of albums itself is not shown on the main artist page, you have to click "See Discography" first. The "Home" page is even worse. Where is my discover weekly play…

soulseek is far better than spotify.

Re: Apps Getting Worse

#164

Post by city41 »

sushisource wrote: post #104
Negitivefrags wrote: post #29

The worst offender recently in my opinion is Spotify on desktop. It used to be that when you clicked on an artists page you would see all the music tracks listed. Now it's all buried deep in and you have to search through the individual albums. Even the list of albums itself is not shown on the main artist page, you have to click "See Discography" first. The "Home" page is even worse. Where is my discover weekly play…

I hope people will use Spotify as a case study in how to fuck up a UI over time. The service itself is fine, I quite like some of the music it finds for me on discover, but the UI is on a slow death march towards complete uselessness, and some features have always been hopelessly broken (queuing). From a business standpoint I find it fascinating. It's about as perfect as an example it gets of "if it ain't broke, don'…

I canceled my Spotify subscription because it was so dang buggy. Getting it to play music for longer than an hour was simply impossible for a myriad of reasons.

I switched to Amazon Music and at the time the webapp looked pretty much just like mainstream Amazon: drab, white/orange/blue, simple. But dang, it was rock solid. I couldn't get it to error if I wanted to. I could leave the tab open for weeks and it'd play music on command without missing a beat. They have since redone the site to make it look more trendy and more Spotify-ish. This new skin brought bugs with it and it's not the reliable workhorse it used to be. It's still way better than Spotify though.

I am very sensitive to buggy software. And in my opinion, most software available today is just riddled with bugs. I completely switched away from Apple because of this for example. To me, this is the real tragedy of modern software. The bad UX, the dark patterns, the slowness, etc... None of this stuff bothers me all that much when it comes down to it. But bugs, bugs get me every time.

Re: Apps Getting Worse

#165

Post by deepspace »

noveltyaccount wrote: post #94
egypturnash wrote: post #47

Evernote. Evernote used to be a crucial component of my life. Quietly synced my notes between my computer and my phone. Let me collaborate with my husband on a few things. Then they rewrote it from the ground up as a sluggish piece of Electron crap. Added a bunch of new stuff that sure looks pretty but gets in the way of the core function of “taking out your phone and scribbling down an idea before it vanishes”. I co…

I think OneNote ticks all your requirement boxes.

Second OneNote. I switched to it back when they broke Evernote. It does not do everything as well as the old Evernote, but it is STABLE. Very few new features in the past 10 years, and that is a GOOD thing.

Re: Apps Getting Worse

#166

Post by CydeWeys »

The Citibike app is a great example of an app that has gotten way worse for no good reason at all. They've cut a lot of features like being able to see available docks prior to undocking a bike (i.e. for route planning), and you used to be able to add friends on your ride without them needing to sign up separately, which is completely gone. The bike unlocking experience has also gotten significantly worse, and will sometimes refuse to unlock a bike when it insists that you "aren't at the station" even though you are. It also treats all stations as points when in reality some are a block long, so if you're at a dock trying to unlock a bike and you happen to be far from the point the app thinks the station is located at, it can fail. Oh, and GPS drift caused by tall buildings is killer.

The whole app has gotten significantly worse since the Lyft takeover.

Re: Apps Getting Worse

#167

Post by Waterluvian »

Negitivefrags wrote: post #29

The worst offender recently in my opinion is Spotify on desktop. It used to be that when you clicked on an artists page you would see all the music tracks listed. Now it's all buried deep in and you have to search through the individual albums. Even the list of albums itself is not shown on the main artist page, you have to click "See Discography" first. The "Home" page is even worse. Where is my discover weekly play…

I want to give the Spotify app one piece of credit for a feature that Apple and others don’t seem capable of providing: gapless playback.

Entire albums simply do not work without gapless playback.

Re: Apps Getting Worse

#168

Post by adriancooney »

davmar wrote: post #149
sushisource wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope people will use Spotify as a case study in how to fuck up a UI over time. The service itself is fine, I quite like some of the music it finds for me on discover, but the UI is on a slow death march towards complete uselessness, and some features have always been hopelessly broken (queuing). From a business standpoint I find it fascinating. It's about as perfect as an example it gets of "if it ain't broke, don'…

We can only blame ourselves for Spotify's bad UI! (jk) Spotify uses an internal experimentation platform that guides which features they determine are successful, based upon how our usage moves their metrics: https://engineering.atspotify.com/2020/10/29/spotifys-new-ex... So, basically, the bad UI is improving their metrics. Or something. Maybe this is a case of experimentation gone wrong.

I'd imagine their metrics are aligned with user behaviour, not experience.

Re: Apps Getting Worse

#169

Post by topkai22 »

grishka wrote: post #144
sushisource wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope people will use Spotify as a case study in how to fuck up a UI over time. The service itself is fine, I quite like some of the music it finds for me on discover, but the UI is on a slow death march towards complete uselessness, and some features have always been hopelessly broken (queuing). From a business standpoint I find it fascinating. It's about as perfect as an example it gets of "if it ain't broke, don'…

My recently favorite question to ask people: why do you need a development team at a company whose product has already been developed, is feature-complete, and everyone's fine with it? A bank doesn't need a full-time development team for example.

“A bank doesn’t need a full time development team for example”

Banks and finance are like the number one employer of software developers outside of pure tech companies. I might be misunderstanding your point, but a bank doing digital banking needs a huge IT staff, including software devs. Even if no new products are being developed (unlikely), they support changes to common industry systems, redevelop systems for retiring hardware/operating systems, support integrations with changing business partners, changes to regulatory requirements, etc. I’m sure some devs pulled late nights trying to support the PPP program for example.

Re: Apps Getting Worse

#170

Post by akudha »

MattGaiser wrote: post #5

Firefighters are heroes for fighting fires. The fire marshall who prevents fires is treated as a waste of money or a pest. Basically same thing here. Companies don’t promote those who preserve good things. They want new things.

This kind of thinking is every where. There is a reason politicians announce grand projects and cut ribbons in full public few (never mind these projects exceed budget and timeline multiple times) instead of fixing existing failing infrastructure.
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