In my usability studies, users were sometimes confused by the lack of a “home” screen. The home screen would be a sidebar entry like the existing ones (and can therefore be hidden by long-pressing). The default value for the back button behavior would then be to open the home screen.
There is a discussion on what elements there should be on a Home screen:
(Sorry for the small size - Penpot doesn’t support exporting yet, and my screen thus screenshot are small. Also, the search bar is missing an icon because there’s a bug in Penpot that makes it impossible to import SVGs at the moment.)
Chromecast button: I would postpone this until Chromecast support is rewritten. It’s currently rather hard to do, I think
Search: Is this a local search feature? Maybe we could add a button to the local search results page that then searches for new podcasts (independently from the home screen)
Continue listening: In German, the translation of title and queue button will likely not fit into one line. Do we need to show the episode from the miniplayer again? I find it important to show a link to the queue screen, so I guess we can show it again.
Latest: Looking at this, I really want to rename the “new” screen to “inbox”, as it is easier to understand (probably not to be discussed here). Not sure about using two different layouts for the list items, as it’s less consistent (and probably makes the code more complex)
Classics: Not 100% sure about the statistics button. I think as a user I would expect it to open the subscriptions list.
Rediscover: Do we really need this? I think a “downloaded” section could be more important.
Should the episodes have swipe actions? Maybe I would postpone that feature for now because swipes would then do different things on different parts of the screen.
Yeap, Home screen can live without it in the beginning.
Yup, local search. Not sure what you mean with adding a button? If it’s local search, we don’t need a button, right?
Yeah, was wondering as well if this makes sense given there’s the miniplayer. As for the titles, I was thinking of using just one verb per block (e.g. “Continue”, “Rediscover”) which would be shorter, but couldn’t find one for each block.
For inbox/New screen: yeap, let’s continue discussing that in the Inbox thread
For two different layouts: are you referring to the Inbox proposal, or something on the Home screen here?
If we want to include the statistics screen anywhere, this is our best option I think. In any case it provides kinda the same as the Subscriptions screen (a list of subscriptions). Only thing I think must be done to make it work is allowing to quickly open podcast from the Statistics screen.
Really needed, nah. Cool thing: I do think so, especially for those with 50 or more subscriptions. We could hide this until a user has 50 subscriptions, then make it appear. Personally this screen is all about playing the stuff you’re subscribed to. For me the ‘Downloaded’ doesn’t fit in that pattern, so I don’t really see why it would be important/what use-case it would serve. If there is a use-case that I’m overlooking, I’d be in favour of adding it as an extra section (rather than replacing any).
I didn’t intend to have swipe actions here (that’s more like management, rather than initiating playback, so out of scope).
Then, new point, about the ‘Latest’ section: would it work/be possible to introduce a ‘Download & play’ button? It would save a tap on ‘play’ when the episode is downloaded.
Nice screen. My thoughts without much thinking below!
Don’t know what to think about continue. It has already been pointed out but I would be in favor not to have it because there is the mini player. Still it was providing quick access to queue.
I will also suggest to :
rename check your classics to “poscasts most played”
for rediscover maybe there should be an additional criteria to exclude those recently listened to ?
not too sure about get surprised, I feel it would be better to have something like discover new podcast but on this point search is too much limited. So I won’t display anything, especially as screen is already full if mini player is shown
I think we all kinda agree there. Let’s try and find an alternative for linking to the queue. What if we display ‘First up in your queue’ - three episodes horizontally, same stile as current ‘Get surprised’. What d’you think?
Yup, good idea!
Ability to play a random episode was requested by someone and I like the idea. So I would keep it.
For Discover we’ll have a dedicated screen as some point, so I’m not sure if it would make sense to include it also in home (?)
At least if there are no local search results, we should display something like No results in your subscriptions. [Search for new podcasts]. As your mock-up makes local search a lot more prominent, I wonder if we still want some kind of button to search online even if there are local results. If one uses the search bar, they could otherwise be disappointed and think that AntennaPod’s database is too small.
I refer to the home screen. The lines in the “latest” section show the podcast title and move the other information around. That will be a bit of a pain to implement cleanly. Also, to be honest, I want to try to be as consistent as possible. AntennaPod 1.x had 3 different layouts for the episode lists with only tiny differences. Users complained about that (#3548#3003).
I recently saw a comment on Google Play by someone claiming that AntennaPod needs more and more storage space over time. My guess would be that they just never delete downloads. Having the screen displayed more prominently could help there.
Personally, I use the downloads screen to (manually) delete played episodes. I don’t trust in the auto-delete feature to always behave like I expect it to behave ^^ It really needs a rewrite. Anyway, not sure if the downloads section should show “delete” buttons or “play” buttons on the home screen.
Yup, good idea. (I think AntennaPod could benefit from some more empty-state-screens in other places, too - but that’s another story.)
I wouldn’t include it on the home screen directly. If anywhere, it could be a button in the search results screen. Maybe next to the last podcast miniature at the top?
Ah, sorry. Right. That’s mainly because I copied two episode list entries from different other mock-ups. I think we need two ‘forms’:
episodes that have not started playback: podcast title above, rest of the info below episode title
episodes that have started playback or were completed: podcast title & date above the episode title, position and duration below episode title (filesize omitted)
Main point here: give more importance to podcast title
As you already describe, there’s another screen for that problem. If an important function (autodelete) doesn’t work easily/as expected/as desired, that cause should be tackled. For me, to be honest, adding another section to a screen is just tackling symptoms (and as it doesn’t serve the screen’s purpose - initiating playback - will just distract most users).
(Don’t feel strong about ‘Download & play’ button, so dropping that here.)
Sounds good If there are no results, it will then automatically be displayed more prominently.
Hmm. There already is the icon. I am not a fan of introducing more different types of list items.
It could be labelled “Listen offline”. I have to admit that the screen’s purpose is actually mostly to delete and not to play episodes. Then let’s not add the downloads section for now.
I get that. We currently have two list entry types, no? Unless I’m missing something, my proposal would keep that (update the list entry types, rather than creating new ones).
We currently only have one layout where we can enable/disable the cover and the drag handle. The one you are proposing moves around all UI elements, so it would need a completely different layout.
Continue listening now has more episodes, to not be just a replication of the miniplayer while still providing access to the queue (if the queue is empty, something should be shown in the two empty spots nudging the user to use the queue - will work on that).
Add extra criterium to Rediscover screen (not recently played)
Section with most-listened podcasts follows statistics setting
Minor text changes (e.g. ‘episodes’ > ‘inbox’)
I changed ‘Look at the latest’ to ‘Review the new’, but actually not a fan of it, because you can’t take action there. So I would change it back.
Added screen/fragment for changing the layout (allowing the user to change the order and hide sections)
To be done/discussed:
Not sure if the local search screen would need/benefit from a mock-up? I mean: we have local search already.
Discussion about the section titles: @ByteHamster said the ‘Continue’ section would be too long in German, @Matth78 suggested to rename ‘Check your classics’ to ‘Most played podcasts’. I wanted to keep a consistent pattern between all titles, but that may be difficult. Maybe a mix may be easiest & nicest after all:
verb + what
Continue listening, Look at the latest, Check your classics, Rediscover podcasts, Get surprised
verb
Continue, [something for latest], [something for classics], Rediscover, Surprise
description
In your queue, New episodes, Most-listened, Forgotten podcasts, Random suggestions
a mix
(Spotify does this: ‘Jump back in’, ‘Made for [name]’, ‘Recently played’, ‘Good morning’)
Continue listening/Up next, New episodes, Most played, Rediscover, Surprise yourself
Ok, I thought there were two already. Discussion for another thread, then I kept them in the mock-up because I like this new layout and was too lazy to ‘correct’ it (there’s a lot of details in these so it’s relatively much work).
look at the lastest : “Recent episodes” or “What’s new”
check your classics : either “Your top podcasts” or “Most played podcasts”. Classics sounds too serious,
rediscover podcasts, maybe : “Podcasts to catch up”
In your mockup there is one caveats for me : if it is a home screen I really feel it would be better to have all in one screen without need to scroll to see all sections.
I don’t see how to fit it all and keeping all sections. I would say my less favorite one is “get surprised”. Even without it, would all fit?
Another point about vertical space, there will be less than in your mockup if there is mini player, and potentially a bottom buttons toolbar (to potentially replace drawer menu)
I like it in English. Not sure (yet) how it’d translate into Dutch. So I guess you’re in favour of the ‘mixed’ approach (from my list above).
I see why you’d want that and you’re right about the limited vertical space, but I don’t think it would be possible to make everything fit. And even then: my boyfriend’s phone (and with him, many others) has a rather small screen. He’d still have to scroll, even if we’d make it fit on your screen (well, depending on the size of your screen, but you get my point haha).
I don’t think we should compromise usability/elements on the page in order to make it all fit. E.g. Spotify’s home screen is scrollable, too, so it’s not uncommon.
If indeed the user could reorder & disable the sections (which would be cool but not sure if feasible), I would hope this already would make it as best for you as possible (you could hide for example the section with random episodes).
I first thought to always keep ‘search’, but maybe it should be possible to turn that on/off, too (allowing you to give more space).
Sure, i’ve updated several of them. I believe one of them can already be merged.#5097
And episode multi select is ready to be reviewed. Hopefully you have time later this week.
(probably not to be discussed here). Not sure about using two different layouts for the list items, as it’s less consistent (and probably makes the code more complex)
If there are no results, it will then automatically be displayed more prominently.
