But if podcast art and beautiful-looking UIs aren't the most important things, then what will we do with all the UX people?
Dear Spotify, can we just get a table of songs?
101–110 of 504 posts
Re: Dear Spotify, can we just get a table of songs?
#102This is a big frustration of mine, too. The other is that Spotify is extremely biased towards playlist listening and makes browsing and listening to a library of albums really painful. The good news is that Spotify's SDK and API are actually powerful enough that you can build up an entire alternative interface, which is actually what I recently started doing: https://i.imgur.com/ar7VrYy.png . It's still work in progr…
Looks neat. Do they have SDK to build desktop players? (Excluding wrapping the web SDK around Electron)
Re: Dear Spotify, can we just get a table of songs?
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's why I'm being driven back to piracy, because the UI/UX is do horrible on these platforms, that and believe it or not because Content discovery is easier a couple of the piracy apps look at what I have in my collection, and do recommendations off that... And guess what.. it's really good. So a bunch of people in their spare time seem to be doing a better job than Netflix, why is that? Because I don't think Netfli…
I have the same issues with all of these services. But I'm wondering if it's some kind "expert mode" issue which is only a problem for a small advanced-user minority - many of whom will be reading HN. Do most users want to be told what to consume? Circumstantially I'd guess so, because otherwise it's a lot of effort to add friction for no reason. But I don't know. Possibly Spotify and Netflix do. Or possibly not. Per…
I can see regular people struggling with Netflix when I'm at some elses home. I don't have a huge sample size though.
For me is that I just refuse to pay because I know they can just do a regular interface but they want to trick you into some stuff with their UI.
I just don't feel in the mood of paying for being treated as laboratory mice.
Re: Dear Spotify, can we just get a table of songs?
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Disney is worse. Which itself is unbelievable as Amazon Prime and Netflix set a very low bar.
But Apple TV (the streaming service that I can access on the web, not the hardware smart TV thing) is much worse than Disney. Literally can't find the name or number of the episode that I'm currently watching in order to tell my wife.
The apple TV app on the mac is utterly horrendous. On my M1 macbook, it lags every time you queue something for download or delete an episode or try to view the details of an episode or series. It's so dumb that a first party app lags on their own line of hardware. Not to mention just how horrible the UX is. None of the clickable elements turn the cursor into a pointer and it takes just a little too long for the hover to trigger which makes it really irritating to use. The player is just as terrible. It automatically opens in full screen and is missing a lot of small quality of life features that other players have had for decades. Even as the cheapest subscription service I just cannot put up with how horrible it is
Re: Dear Spotify, can we just get a table of songs?
#105The truncated text is a huge peeve of mine with designers. I get that it’s hard to design a nice grid if you have to account for text that wrapped etc, but not everyone is called Tom Smith, and not all titles are 20 characters long. A designer I know advocated that users should be coaxed into using shorter titles and descriptions so that the UI looks good. It just makes me seethe.
> A designer I know advocated that users should be coaxed into using shorter titles
My collection is 99% classical. The problem is especially bad for classical tracks. “Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op…” What opus, what movement? what tempo marking? Yes I’ll go back and tell Beethoven to change the title to something shorter and catchier. “Joy, Bros!” Is that better?
It’s some kind hubris to think your UI (itself the result of design laziness) is a bigger priority than the integrity of the composer’s intent.
Re: Dear Spotify, can we just get a table of songs?
#106Netflix and Amazon are terrible. Want to continue what you were watching? Gonna have to find where we hid that this time, g’luck!
It's why I'm being driven back to piracy, because the UI/UX is do horrible on these platforms, that and believe it or not because Content discovery is easier a couple of the piracy apps look at what I have in my collection, and do recommendations off that... And guess what.. it's really good. So a bunch of people in their spare time seem to be doing a better job than Netflix, why is that? Because I don't think Netfli…
Do what you want, of course, but no one is driving you there. You're freely walking towards a luxury good offered for nothing.
Re: Dear Spotify, can we just get a table of songs?
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which they openly admit to doing on purpose to “increase engagement” or whatever, even attaching a monetary value to shoving new stuff in your face before you can finish the old stuff.
This is why I believe forced interoperability is essential to the future of online consumer tech. We've discussed it here in the context of social media monopoly regulation, but it has far greater implications. Salient examples are the alternative Twitter interfaces that proliferated, and indeed those for Hacker News. One huge benefit is that users won't be stuck with a single, often hostile UI, but be free to either…
That would be cool, but then some of those interfaces (probably the ones with the most ad funding) would be part-owned by one of the streaming services and would push their content the most. Feels like it'd be just one more hull on the Titanic.
Re: Dear Spotify, can we just get a table of songs?
#108I use Winamp for my MP3 collection that I downloaded of my T1 line at the office. When I turn that mother up on and my CRT monitor starts smoking because of the Winamp addons that spikes all kinds of shit whenever the tune is changing, then I know I have found the right track. Then I get cracking on the floor. Break dancing and caps flying around. The neighbors come jumping in the door and starts clapping and the mus…
Forgive me if I'm wrong but I suspect this comment is GPT3 generated. Regardless, it was hilariously absurd.
Re: Dear Spotify, can we just get a table of songs?
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I work in IT for 15 years and I legit have problems navigating the app I have the same issue, just with YouTube Music (regardless of platform). Other applications I cannot figure out how to navigate includes Slack and Snapchat. Snapchat is on the phone, of cause, but sometimes I just need to exit the app, because I can't figure out how to get back. Slack... I just don't know, it looks like one of those crazy Chines…
> because I can't figure out how to get back Are you on iOS? IIRC it doesn't have a back button/gesture, unlike Android, and that's the only way that makes sense to me, but maybe I'm misunderstanding. Regarding Slack, maybe it's different on iOS, but it looks relatively straightforward - on login you get the list of channels and DMs, you can click on one, and then go back with a button next to the channel name, which…
Yes, it's iOS. There might be a gesture, but those have zero discoverability. Especially when you're left handed, then many of them feels wrong.
I never used Slack on iOS, it might be better than on the desktop. The desktop application doesn't use as many resources as the internet had led me to believe, so that's nice, but the interface as WAAAY too busy to be effective as a communications platform. I still miss HipChat, and while it has its own set of problem, I honestly think I prefer the train wreck that is Google Chat.
Re: Dear Spotify, can we just get a table of songs?
#110Amazon's Kindle app is an even bigger offender in this category. It shows your library as a 4 x 4 grid of tiny cover thumbnail on your phone, so there is no hope whatsoever of reading a title.
So you click one, and what does it do? It downloads the whole book then drops you in at whatever page you last read, then hides the book title and author.
Unless you can recognize the cover photo (which changes to match the latest edition), there is really no way to know what you're going to get except to guess.