Rockbox Development > Feature Ideas
User Experience and Rockbox- A rethink required?
adityabhandari:
--- Quote ---As for how it looks, most of the players have screens wider than they are tall so the equalizer more readily fits rotated as it is. Are you really saying that it's confusing to users that something has simply been rotated?
--- End quote ---
That's exactly what I am suggesting! Would you be used to a rotated number-dial on your cell phone?
--- Quote ---It is physically impossible to design something above a certain degree of complexity without requiring reading. Including tooltips in the product is just a way of disguising the manual as the software - for something you use regularly and want to keep lean isn't it better to keep them separate and individually efficient?
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I understand what you're saying and that's why I mentioned earlier that we should use the tooltips very judiciously and only where they are deemed absolutely necessary. Also, I forgot to mention. The tooltips need not be permanent. The user should have the option of turning them off after he/she feels that they are not needed.
--- Quote ---Also, keep in mind that Rockbox isn't a product. Sure, we would like people to use and enjoy it, but we don't have to go for the lowest common denominator in order to chase sales.
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Again, I just want it to get more efficient at what it already does :) The bottom line is that no user, and I am assuming all users to be fairly technical, should have their 'WTF' moment with Rockbox. I've had my fair share of those and that's why I am here :)
Also, I am leaving for the day! It's 8.30PM and I am still in office. I should be home.
Will take the conversation forward tomorrow! :)
Llorean:
--- Quote from: adityabhandari on December 17, 2009, 09:52:59 AM ---
--- Quote ---As for how it looks, most of the players have screens wider than they are tall so the equalizer more readily fits rotated as it is. Are you really saying that it's confusing to users that something has simply been rotated?
--- End quote ---
That's exactly what I am suggesting! Would you be used to a rotated number-dial on your cell phone?
--- End quote ---
That's a very different situation. A cellphone keypad is used frequently and subject to muscle memory. An equalizer is adjusted rarely, and the visual display of the equalizer does not affect the physical inputs necessary to adjust it in any way.
On the subject of images that you brought up earlier - what sort of redesign do you have in mind? Rather than listing problems that exist, why not start out with a rough description of what your ideal Rockbox would be like in terms of UI?
ew:
Please forgive me if my ideas are off base, or impractical, but a variation of tool tips may be something workable.
Now that there are themes (with the sbs file), perhaps a way to implement a tooltip would be to have the tip display in a special area (say at the bottom of the screen) using a token in the sbs.
To elaborate:
- The tool tip would be some additional text that would be displayed along with a menu item.
- The tool tip text would be displayed as defined in some new wps token.
- Tool tip placement and use would be up to the theme developers
- Perhaps tool tip text could be added as an element to language files, thus allowing languages and customizations as desired (I am sure there could be some humorous ones as well)
Does this make sense?
Is this doable?
Is it beneficial?
adityabhandari:
--- Quote ---That's a very different situation. A cellphone keypad is used frequently and subject to muscle memory. An equalizer is adjusted rarely, and the visual display of the equalizer does not affect the physical inputs necessary to adjust it in any way.
--- End quote ---
They're not, not really. If you go one level deeper, they have much to do with the user's mental model of a certain product.
From now on, I will not propose any fixes/ideas here until I have UI proposals for them. However, I will keep you all updated about the latest in the form of daily reports and if I have any doubts.
Summary report for today
I have not had much time to post here today but I have downloaded all the simulators today. I saw some of them and I have a definitely-positive feeling that we can pull off universal usability fixes.
Last night, I sat down and thought about what UI design is all about. It's about users of course and how they interact with a product. In this context, I'd like to ask if we have any specific data/ statistics about rockbox usage? E.g.: Number of total downloads so far, and which ones are the highly used players? What is the level of technical expertise of rockbox users?Etc..
How it could possibly help?
It's always better to know what segment we are designing for. It will also put to rest claims that it is mostly developers who download and use rockbox. Or that all rockbox users have advanced needs.
It may not be the case, OR it just might. In the end, we'd have the truth, cold hard facts, and not opinions.
And based on facts, we can create a sort of persona for the 'average' rockbox user whom we can further design the product for.
I have a feeling that such data does not exist. So, my proposal is that we conduct this data collection exercise in the form of a questionnaire. The questionnaire can be featured in a section which is frequented by most users. How about that?
Regarding Images-A case for moving forward to .png and .jpg
Bitmap files(.bmp) are uncompressed and huge, in comparison to .jpg which are used universally across the web but do not offer transparency. The best case would be to support .png which is a very lightweight image format that also supports transparency.
Llorean:
I think you missed a few specific points: It's not necessarily desired to design for the "average" Rockbox user.
This isn't a "product." It's not sold. It does not need to increase its market share. It needs to increase its developer count - people interested in contributing code and time to improving it.
Therefor while the majority of users may not be technical or advanced users, the target audience is not the same as the majority user base.
Any usability "improvements" need to not be considered regressions by the people actually working on the software - they need to make it better for the developers first.
--- Quote ---Regarding Images-A case for moving forward to .png and .jpg
Bitmap files(.bmp) are uncompressed and huge, in comparison to .jpg which are used universally across the web but do not offer transparency. The best case would be to support .png which is a very lightweight image format that also supports transparency.
--- End quote ---
Even on software that uses PNG/JPG at some point the image is decompressed to BMP before display. BMP has the advantage of requiring little to no processing for use (remember, these are very limited devices) whereas PNG would either need to be decompressed on load (in which case it's less efficient than BMP - processing on loads and still uses the same RAM) or decompressed on display (could use less RAM, but quite a bit more CPU time).
As well, the core Rockbox UI is not image based. With a few key exceptions (the sliders in the equalizer, for example) all images in the Rockbox UI are part of themes, and are completely customizable by the user. So again, you really shouldn't be thinking much about images - the UI you're designing shouldn't incorporate any of its own, nor require any, if possible.
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