Zune 2.1 update – Please dumb me down!

Posted under A Geek Dad's Life, Blog Posts, Software Design

The long-awaited Zune software and firmware update hit the Internet last night, and I have upgraded my system. 

I have been waiting for this integrated podcast support, and I like much of what I see in that area of the application.  It needs more work, but its a great start.  I also like the updated firmware on the Zune device itself.  It seems peppier/faster, and it drives a bit better than the original firmware.  In general, I like the Zune for its functionality and design, and the platform has a ton of potential.  I will likely buy another Zune for my wife for Christmas.  (I hope she doesn’t read this!)

With those glowing words of praise, I will now unleash my river of discontent with the general direction of the new Zune desktop software user interface. 

The only way for me to like the new Zune desktop software is to:

1. Be glad for the new [mysterious and magical] podcast support, and
2. Learn to enjoy scrolling through lists, and
3. Pretend that I am a 75 year-old grandmother that has only 8 things that she listens to, doesn’t care how things work or when things will be finished downloading. UPDATE: I found the active download list… in the Marketplace tab.

Taking the You out of UI

My biggest gripe is with the new UI.  My problem is not that they moved some of my favorite features around;  My problem is that the removed some my favorite features entirely.  Why the heck can’t I sort my stuff the way I used to?! 

Also, why on earth would you abandon the Likert scale rating system (1-5) in favor of a binary (2-level) Yes/No Love/Hate Great/Sucks rating system?!?  Did Netflix really get it wrong? How will you build a collaborative filtering system for recommendations?  The Zune community team should talk to Dave Slusher.

…and my mouse now travels more miles across the screen to get back-and-forth between the various clickable stuff!

Up to the categories, all the way down to the scroll bar, way over to the add button, over to the back button, etc. 

It seems like the workflow buttons are miles away from each other, and I am wearing out my track pad. (I wonder how many of the Zune team tested the UI with a laptop trackpad.)

Bigger with less stuff = Sucks!

Being a seasoned, war-torn, and battle-scarred developer, I instinctively know what transpired in those “User Experience” meetings; someone said “make it really easy to use,” and some other poor schmuck interpreted that as “make everything bigger with fewer choices.”  That’s great if your target market is currently collecting Social Security, but it is not so great if your target market consists of technologically savvy folks like me.  Please don’t ask me to forget how I used your software in the past!

Easy-To-Use does not equal Simple-To-Use.  I’ve been trying to get comfortable with this new Zune desktop software for over an hour, and I am still struggling with its disjointed conventions and silo-like views into the media collections.  Where is my list of ALL podcast items?  Where is my status list indicating which items are sync’ing, and which ones are pending?  (UPDATE: I found the active download list… in the Marketplace tab.)  Why do I have to click on each subscription to figure out if it is sync’d to my Zune or not?  Why can’t I see or edit the feed URL of a podcast after I add it?!?  The Zune software is aware of this information, and I want it to display it to me!

You know, the UI designers had a great time making the application “pretty,” but the visual data density is very sparse, and they seem to have completely ignored the more sophisticated users.

Reward Experienced Users with a Rock Star UI

So, if you are on a product development team, do your customers a favor and take a lesson from the gaming world.  Your user interfaces should start simple, and grow in complexity as the user gains experience.  Your user interfaces must also allow for different skill levels, and allow the expert users to flip a switch and jump deep into your application’s job queues, status monitors, and sorting options.  Quit hiding the good stuff!

Your UI should also allow the expert users to control the data-density level, exposing the font and image size settings so that we data mongers can set our font size to 8pt and cram a sea of information on our screens.  Nothing pisses me off more than having to scroll through a list of pictures when I could instead see the whole list if it were just text!  Puh-lease.

You moved my F*&#%@ cheese again!

One more thing about releasing an “upgrade:”  Please don’t take away the features that your customers have grown to rely upon to manage their stuff.  This seems like a fundamental principle that everyone on the Zune Team should have learned in Product Development School.  Alas, the new Zune desktop software no longer has a “sort by Genre” feature.  Just because no one on the Product Team found it useful doesn’t mean there weren’t thousands of customers that were shocked to find it missing in this new release. Ack.

“Let me tell you what you really want.”

I will continue using the new Zune desktop software, and I will try to get used to it.  I’m sure that my desire for the “missing” features will fade over time, and I will forget that I was ever this disappointed.  Such is the plight of the user.  This is a good experience that every developer should live through occasionally.  We developers get wrapped up in what we think that the users want, and we can lose sight of our customers really want and desire.