User Experience and Rockbox- A rethink required?

[cpu98]

Here goes some my thoughts.
I don't need them, but they would be nice.
Rather than tooltip that pops up, tooltip bar would be better.(For small screen or anything)
Of course that bar should be disableable.

[GodEater]

If XBMC is a "good design" in your book, I'm becoming less interested in what you have to say. Learning to use XBMC requires learning many screens individually, whereas learning Rockbox requires learning list navigation and the existence of the context menu. Other than that, almost every option available is actually in the settings where a user would look for it.

The fact that XBMC "looks good" doesn't make it a good UI. Please, when you present your ideas focus on functionality issues rather than appearance issues.

Ditto. XBMC is shiny. That doesn't mean it has a good UI at all. In fact, I was only swearing at it the other day because there's no consistent way to turn off subtitles in it.

[adityabhandari]

Improving user feedback in Rockbox UI

I hope you all can see this link?
https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B6bduX-uMpdUZjRmMmRiNzEtYjQ5OC00MjAxLWFiMDEtNGNlZjE1YTlkMGUz&hl=en

[Llorean]

The idea of showing the setting value in the list has actually been discussed before. I don't know what the results were, but some searching should help you find it.

The issue in the context menu sounds like a bug that should've been reported. The same with "it remembers which font I selected in the simulator but not on the player." Are you sure that the version on your player and the version of your simulator match?

Please, when writing these up, don't write "Rockbox must do this" but perhaps "Rockbox should do this." It sounds very aggressive the way you've written it.

[AlexP]

The idea of showing the setting value in the list has actually been discussed before. I don't know what the results were, but some searching should help you find it.

From memory the major objections were something like it looks bad/doesn't work on smaller screens/with bigger fonts.

[psycho_maniac]

The idea of showing the setting value in the list has actually been discussed before. I don't know what the results were

this what your talking about?
http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?topic=5881.0
also i like the Rockbox UI_Feedback.pdf link. looks nice, but i want the back button to act as it does now currently when at the main menu.
edit: i think that if we go hit the back button when we are in a context menu we should be taken back to where we were. the only one i know of is when your in the wps and you hold select and when you hit back you are taken back to where you were, which is the wps.

edit: wow i have been a member here for 5 years and i just busted the 800 post mark YAY me!

[Llorean]

I think you misunderstood what he's saying - he's not proposing changing the back button (as far as I can tell) but rather fixing a bug where pressing "back" doesn't take you to the previous level of the menu, but rather kicks you out of the menu and back to the WPS.

[JdGordon]

the thing with the context menu is not a bug.. its actually by design (and by that I mean thats the way its worked for the last 4 years and wont likly be changed any time soon... in fact, there is actually bandaid code in there to make it work :/ )

My preferred method for showing the setting value in the list is to make the current item 2 lines high with the name of the setting on the top line and the value right aligned on the second line. This is actually fairly fiddly and might not really be doable. There are also problems with showing setting values in the lists, some settings look like settings to the user, but are actually handled differently so either special handling needs to be added for them (not good), or they are displayed differently (also not great).

help text of any type is not really ideal because it wastes alot of space, or it involves alot of disk access (or is done in a plugin which only allows english).

from the pdf...
1) displaying "nothing to resume" in the main menu is possible, just needs someone to do it
2) There was already a discussion about remembering the current theme, I am hugely against this because there is no way to enforce it (unlike remembering the font or wps), search the forums and irc if you want more explanation
3) there is no rule three!

[Llorean]

It's by design that you can tap "right" to go into Sound Settings, then "Left" to leave it back to the context menu but tapping "Right" to go into Playlist followed by "Left" doesn't take you back to the context menu, but rather to the WPS?


I do agree with JdGordon that the two-line proposal for the settings looked best if it can ever be achieved (and is probably most compatible with larger fonts, etc, and almost certainly would work better on charcell displays than the shared-line version).

[BdN3504]

One thing I found a bit irritating when switching to rockbox was that after you changed the "view file type" setting, you sometimes ended up with an empty filebrowser. For people who don't RTFM this causes panic, because they think all their files have automagically gone and rockbox is an evil disk formatting virus infected OS some jerk put on their beloved DAP. This of course is the consequence of entering the quickscreen and changing that setting without knowing what it does.
These useres couldn't undo this change because they didn't know what they had done. This was mainly because the "display file type" setting wasn't displayed anywhere but in that setting. Now that there is the wonderful feature of customisable satusbars, this is a problem of the past.
On any account, I suggest we include the view file type setting in the default sbs (e.g. with the letter A, P, M, S) and create a manual entry for that.

As for popups, this could easily be done using conditional viewports in combination with the %mv tag. of course the %mv tag would have to adapt to the current screen and represent changes taking place respectively. Am I right in assuming that every screen in rockbox is currently shown in a viewport? If that's really the case and we are in favor of popups (which i understand we're not), I'd suggest we work on an XML interpreter. People could provide XML files in which every menu item is listed including a description which serves as the pop up text. i don't know about the difficulty of implementing a XML reader, so this suggestion might also very well be complete nonsense.

[JdGordon]

is the "fiew file type" option still on the default QS?

[torne]

Yes, it's still there. Is there something better to replace it with?

[Llorean]

Anything really. If the up/down directions are correct for it, maybe simply "volume." If it would be inversed, something else. Things with less confusing behavior than "show files" would be great.

It's caused no end of confusion for users over the years.

[BdN3504]

i find the sort files setting very useful in the quickscreen, because when you transferred music to your player recently and know the name of the folder/file you transferred and it's not easy to find in the alphabetical view, then using the "sort by newest date" setting is helping a lot.
you all suggested removing the show filetype item from the quickscreen but didn't comment on my suggestion of including this setting in the default sbs. removing this setting is the "cheap" way of addressing this problem, so what do you think of the inclusion?

[[Saint]]

Since this is still "User Experience and Rockbox- A rethink required?"

How the f**k did you get:

So you're saying that technically illiterate people could possibly never want to use an open source product?

From:

Just a *weeeee* bit of an underestimate saying there "may" be other such users out there, in my opinion it seems pretty obvious that there's a rather large percentage of the "technically illiterate" that use rockbox and even after having gui/feature related requests shot down continue to do so, because of the simple fact that it may not be pretty, but it just plain does more...

I'd rather an "ugly" player that did a shit-load of stuff than a "pretty" one that just does the basics that all the other DAP's do....otherwise, what's the need to switch to RockBox?



The point I was trying to make at the time was (and this had been explained to you before but you conveniently ignored it) that Rockbox is in no way a "streamlined product", nor is it intended for the "general population"....if the general public can use it and get a kick out of it....great....all the better.
But it's designed by Devs FOR Devs and with continued development in mind, which is the reason (I presume) that there are quite a few things that "don't look nice".

I was trying to point out that every single user has the option of either sticking with Rockbox or reverting back to their OFW, and by "Have you read the forums?" I was trying to convey the fact that it's apparent that even with the fact that Rockbox " 'aint pretty ", it just plain does more than the OFW so despite it's apparent "downsides" for inexperienced users...it's an informed choice that they've made to continue using it.

Requests for support in the forums/irc support the fact that even as a "work in progress" users would still rather work out the kinks they have with Rockbox than revert back to the OFW (a "streamlined" "product")...so is refinement at this stage really necessary?

Without a clear view of the end stage "product" is it even possible to achieve?

What's the point in "streamlining" (which lets face it, often doesn't actually involve streamlining anything, but rather simply removing features/information from the user) a "product" that could well change drastically in the forseeable future?


[St.]