To reply to wer → I'd be wary of these problematic situations with regards to complex UIs:
- There is a user that does not need a feature, yet has to ignore it in the UI (the Product manager did not say NO enough times?, someone outside of the target audience is trying to use the product?)
- There is a user that needs a feature, yet does not understand how to use the UI to get the expected result (the person designing the UI has still some work to do)
#1 is not helped by supplying the user with more information, only #2 is – and the goal of the help is not to teach the user basic information about what he wants to do, but rather how to use the available controls to achieve what they need.
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P.S.: The better the person designing the UI understands the knowledge, mental models, skills, and expectations of the primary target audience the better the outcome.
Petr, you seem to be asserting that if the UI designer has done his job correctly, then:
1. The user will always be able to understand the interface without information, documentation, or anything else.
2. That the user will never have to see interface elements for a feature he does not want.
But these things are just false. You seem to have fallen into common traps: believing what is true of you is true of everyone else, and believing that all users are the same, or homogeneous. Your point #1 seems to say that if you can find a user who doesn't want a particular feature, the Product Manager should not have put that feature in. Absurd. You'd end up with a product with no features at all, since you can always find someone who doesn't need something.
The fact of the matter is that users have different needs, and different abilities. Regardless of the type of product, some users are extremely clever and technical, and some users are extremely stupid and clumsy. For a product like MC, some users want video capabilities, whereas some users only want audio, and they don't want to see anything having to do with video. Some users want customization, some users want nothing other than for the app to play their music when they tap it.
Just because you do not want to see an interface element, does not mean that no one else wants to see it either. Should MC have more hideable controls? Sure. But any controls hidden by default would result in complaints by users. Then there'd have to be controls to hide and unhide the controls. UIs don't function telepathically.
Consider the simplest possible appliance: a toaster. Even a child must be shown how to use it the first time. If you live in a town with absolutely no crime, the car you purchase will still have locks.
I do not dispute that the MC interface could be improved. But because of the requirements of its users, it must do many, MANY things. Because of that, there must be a certain amount of complexity that requires explanation. The more functionality your take out or hide, to protect the sensibilities of people who don't want those features, the more you impair people who do.
Consider what Apple has done with their phone OS, now called iOS. They have more UI and UX designers than you can shake a stick at. The early interfaces had very simple touch controls. And Apple was met with constant cries of "WTF! There is no way for me to do this, or that, or this other thing." Now look at all the different ways you have to tap and hold and press harder swipe left, right, up, down, 2-fingers, 4-fingers, and all sorts of other non-intuitive nonsense. Or consider the paradox of buttons and icons: small pictures labeled with words are provably more usable and understandable than small pictures without. But label all the buttons, and people complain that too much space is taken up on the screen. Once you learn what a pictogram means, it is easier. But before that, it is not. Have you ever tried introducing an elderly person to a modern audio device? They ask where the PLAY button is. A right-pointing triangle is not PLAY until you learn that.
People have various levels of knowledge and experience that they bring with them. There is no application, or device, that can be all things to all people, and to assert otherwise is nonsense. Because of the diversity of the user community, there is no way to make an interface that satisfies all people with regards to simplicity and hiding things they don't use, but still provides everything that everyone else wants, and requires no explanation. A couple of small tweaks, like changing "Reset selection" to "Clear" and then avoiding any startup-guide/documentation/help and info just doesn't get it done.
JRiver should do better in UI design. But it is not "doing better" to pursue solely something that cannot be achieved at the expense of something that is required. In other words, the MC interface should be improved, but it should be done along with providing the user the help and information they need, instead of thinking "just do the interface right and everyone will always understand everything". The catch-22 is that JRiver will not do better documentation, and it's impossible to make the application so simplistic that no documentation is needed. So there will always be a gap, with people posting how it's too hard and needs to be better.
Sorry if this sounded like a bit of a rant, but this subject regarding MC has been getting discussed, in one form or another for years. And the broader subject of UI design for decades.
You're not the first, or only, person who wants the MC experience improved.
