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[JimH]

The subject of "eye candy" came up in another thread.  Here are some images:

Sonos:





JRemote:





Gizmo:

[connersw]

Those are the Playing Now screens, and they all look fairly similar (Cover Art makes them nice and pretty).

There is a bigger difference when you look at the actual user interface and navigation.

Gizmo "home" page:


Gizmo menu on a tablet:


Gizmo search:


Sonos search:


Sonos full layout with rooms (zones) and sources:


Some Sonos menus:

[JimH]

I've split a few posts.

[Arindelle]

not sure what you are looking for here Jim .. suggestions?

tu really show off JRemote you have to also show what can be shown - especially on the ipad ... like meta data/artist Bio differences when you pivot. Sonos seems to have static screens and althouth the zone/cue list is ok when you need all this information. JRemote really is great using the screen real estate it has available.

You need the zone stuff, but you don't use it all the time .. search (although being constantly tweaked, I think is great because it is in a menu for global searching and in the frame.

In terms of "eye-candy" its good to do if it is "bauhausian". The Soonos telephone is using IOS 7 graphics (subjective: they are ok for dark screens, but they are flat -- in white they don't work as well and can be harder to read)  Little features of JRemote like if you have an album why see 20 images of the same cover -- real estate loss

Also JRemote is less "Tree" oriented (less "windows-y") and more intuitive (especially in tablette size).

If you are looking for suggestions .. why not just port the graphics over from JRemote (not all the functions yet, but that would be a game plan ) see how it works and what would be a major pain to implement in a first staging. Charge people for it if necessary. 8 bucks for JRemote one of the best purchases I've made in years. (then port it over to Theater view .. ooh I didn't say that,  did I )

[MrHaugen]

Not much text here, but the pictures speak for them self.

While the playing now are quite similar on all 3 services. I would say that Gizmo suffers with the generic icon an plain looks in most cases. I do understand that this is probably partially done because you can customize the view. I do think however, that a more polished default view could merge well with custom items as well, if done right. It's not just about the looks though. Things like adding album covers on icons and other small things can also increase the usability and perception of order and control. Gizmo is really not adapted to pads and bigger displays. While JRemote does a much better job at this. Sonos looks like it's using the space very well. And Sonos does the zone linking much better than the JRiver equivalent.

I just love the clean and modern look of the Sonos skin in the Playing Now example.

[)p(]

I think another good ui example for audio to look at to get some ideas from is ipeng for the squeezebox devices.

For video I think plex for ios is interesting because although it's generic in approach it works really well for movies, tv shows etc. The lists show most relevant info like description, watched status and rating info without looking cramped. And it incorporates an info icon to get more detailed information.

[JimH]

not sure what you are looking for here Jim .. suggestions?

I'm looking for specifics of what people who use Sonos think about where their UI is stronger.

I'm not looking for general advice for how to overhaul MC.  If anyone has something to say on that, please start a new thread or use one of the many older threads on that subject.

[DWAnderson]

I don't use Sonos and I don't pretend to be an expert on UI design, but I have used Gizmo and found its UI to less attractive than many other music player phone apps, Sonos included.

Here is what I find more attractive about the Sonos UI, just from the photos:

-- More colorful.
-- Shows album covers in more contexts.
-- Makes nice use of tablet screen real estate.
-- Nice looking buttons.