I was checking out the different stuff being made. But there’s something lacking. I want to see what designs there are for the user interface.
There is many code discussions but not so much on the UI. Also I do not know who is working on. I would like to dedicate this topic to dig into this.
In the next posts, I will ask some questions to update this start post with.
Yes, in this phase we didn’t any mockup… The goal was to have the “classic” UI developed at first. We have the chance to have themes and styles (already done). So we can create the mockups for the new version… What do you think?
I think that approach is still the best way. I would like to suggest that I will create the mocks for the current version and just start in small iterations to improve the interface. There are a lot of users of Volumio already, and it’s nice to collect some data from them instead of reworking the UI without a clue .
I could drive this and gather everything together. The benefit of this team is that we can improve fast because of the small size. We can learn a lot from Spotify, Sonos and Deezer as well.
So my concrete idea would be the following.
Create the mocks of mobile / tablet / desktop
Gather comments from forums and qualitive interviews (I have tons of people here at work who are interested and are daily users of streaming systems)
Add the comments to the mockups of the current version
Determine a goal with all of us where we want to go with the UI.
All in small iterations to keep it comprehensible to able to actually make changes.
The basic functionality should be first in line. That’s covered by the “classic” webui, so the road looks free to iterate upon.
Localisation is often request, so I would love if you would keep that in mind during the whole process. This should be front end only with just a single pull-down menu to select the (user installed) language.
Absolutely right. Often players and apps are overcrowded with functionality, but there are only a few people actually wanting that. Classic is a great way to start!
For the first improvement, I would need some technical feedback.
Currently, we have a stop button. This is an analog concept and is not really needed anymore. Since I think the transport control should be persistant navigation, I want it gone. (Seen this in a couple of user tests done by other designers).
I had the feedback some time ago, that this will not stop drives spinning. Is there a way we can remove the stop functionality from the front-end?
Too bad about the stop button can be handy tho indeed. But mostly found it irrelivant. Perhaps we could see how it can work in a usertest. With the switching between spotify / mpd… maybe there’s a handy way of doing that in code.
I’ve PM-ed socketman. I wonder if he is allowed to enter the Developer forum here. It’s not handy to both work on the UI in another direction