Label buttons - one more time

[Thomas Lübking]

Hi Daniel,
an answer would have been nice instead of making this the 3rd or 4th "let's 
discuss the toolbar change" thread, but:

== Questioning conventions ======
- Why does the user know things?
- How do you know what s/he knows?
- What is the stop button good/important for? (Except on some streams that 
cannot be resumed - this needs to be handled technially)
- What does "next" mean in a random play mode? Same as in a linear mode?
- What is the advance of _not_ providing information about the adjacent tracks 
as we know and have the "physical" opportunity?
- Do the costs of adapting to a change surpass benefits of the change (more 
and pre- information, stressed play/pause button and wider hit areas, 
regarding usability)

- Should we clone the UI of iTunes or WMP? (I.e.: what is more "expected")
- Should we bring ffwd/fbwd buttons? (Non of my HW players actually has a 
slider to change the position -pro devices usually have wheels for this- so 
where do you know what it does?)

== Music Player UI history ===============
Just for the records, the first "music player" ever would be the phonograph by 
Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville and the only UI was a winder.
(So was it for Edison's "actually working" phonograph ;-)

Following phono players didn't have play/pause/stop/skip buttons either.
(Well, in fact there was a button to connect electric power and make the table 
turn, but i doubt there has ever been any icon on them)

Parts of the UI you describe were introduced with CC players, the skip buttons 
came with the CD.

== UI theory nitpicking ==============
I hope that your UI class addressed the difference between
a) hidden (undetectable, i.e. you need to really search it)
b) obscure (it's there, but function is uncertain, you have to figure what it 
really does)
c) unexposed (it's there, it'd be quite clear what it did, but you have to 
detect that it's interactive)
d) uncommon (has looked different in the past, you have to adept to it)

I think we can agree that a) is not the case, b) would be a problem (what'd 
you expect from clicking the name of a track in this context?), c) is to be 
addressed and d) was a decision made.


== "Changes hurt" awareness ==========
I btw. did and do not expect "changing things that maybe just are because 
they've been" to happen fluidly (think of the Ribbons*, even the Aqua UI was 
critized for being too "strange" in the first place ;-)

This _is_ sort of an experiment and there _are_ and will be things to be 
addressed and things might end up entirely different as expected / intended 
(e.g. i never worried about "clickable labels", as Amarok has a bunch of text 
in "non-views" and basically every part of the front UI is interactive  - ok, 
except the statusbar :)


Thomas

*I've other objections on them, mostly about screen estate - but it's not "i 
need my menubar"

Am Saturday 13 February 2010 schrieb Daniel Dewald:
> Up until now I was silent in this whole label/bar discussion but I feel an
> urge to clarify a my view of a few points.
> 
> First of all I may not be THE UI guy but I recently attended to a class
>  called "Human Interface Interaction" and had an exam about it which is
>  both quite vivid in my mind. And the FIRST rule of UI simply is to give
>  the user what he expects. Its nice to invent new stuff and its nice to
>  have new features as long as the user opens the UI and knows what he has
>  to do to get the job done. So what is the user expecting when he wants to
>  play music? He wants an arrow button to start playing, a two bars button
>  for pause (its plausible to integrate those two), a button with a
>  rectangle for stop and two buttons with 2 arrows in it for next and
>  previous. We have no stop button which personally I hate.. and we also
>  have no next and previous buttons. That a simple fact. If I have to SEARCH
>  for the next, previous and stop "buttons" the UI simply does not work as
>  expected which violates the most fundamental rules of Interaction. So for
>  god sake put those damn buttons back where they belong and let us work on
>  features who are not integrated in the mind of the user since the first
>  music player invented EVER! Sorry if my comment about this is a bit pissed
>  but we all dance around this and it simply is stupid from my point of view
>  because its obvious.
> 
> 
> Daniel
>