OS 3.0 Sessions Issues & Questions

[Jayaredoubleu]

I just noticed something with OS3 yesterday and it has me confused, and concerned.

I can't see the rooms associated with my sessions?   Is anyone else having that problem?    I recognize I Can click the down arrow to have them show up, but that is now how the videos on Control4's website show how OS3 should work. 

This seems to be independent of sources.   Source 1 is Autonomic and Source 2 is native pandora in C4

Second question: Should you be able to click on the session and have it pull up? or do you have to go back into the individual room to pull up the session?

 

 

[neil12011]

Unfortunately, this is the case with personal system as well...

[South Africa C4 user]

Maybe in OS3.1.1? And no, I am not ITK - just hoping!

[ILoveC4]

That’s the case for me as well. I don’t feel like it used to be this way, however. 

[indecision]

Same happening here.  It is strange that we can't click on the session and go there.  Seems intuitive for it to work that way.

[ILoveC4]

12 minutes ago, indecision said:

Same happening here.  It is strange that we can't click on the session and go there.  Seems intuitive for it to work that way.

What if the session is 3 different rooms?

[sonic30101]

Select the drop-down on the far right of the session and it shows the room name and volume

[Jonathan, C4 Engineer]

On 11/15/2019 at 6:32 AM, Jayaredoubleu said:

I just noticed something with OS3 yesterday and it has me confused, and concerned.

I can't see the rooms associated with my sessions?   Is anyone else having that problem?    I recognize I Can click the down arrow to have them show up, but that is now how the videos on Control4's website show how OS3 should work. 

This seems to be independent of sources.   Source 1 is Autonomic and Source 2 is native pandora in C4

Second question: Should you be able to click on the session and have it pull up? or do you have to go back into the individual room to pull up the session?

 

 

In response to your first question there was a design change made after the initial release to instead of displaying the rooms the sessions are playing in just show the transports since that's something you can immediately take action on when coming to this view. What rooms were playing in is considered more secondary information that could be collapsed by default to preserve space per session. 

As for your second question the media source not going to now playing when clicking on it is intentional. Since a session playing can represent multiple rooms that can all be controlled differently for the same session (ie muted/volume level differences), it's a more complicated visual problem to come up with an intuitive experience for the user while showing all the details we currently show for the now playing view to also bring in the various controls and states for each room that session is streaming to. We opted for solving that issue, for now, by just making the now playing room based when you want to go to the currently streaming session that the given room is participating in.

We would be interested in feedback you have about this experience. If you preferred how it was before, what did you like about it? How did you use that information to accomplish what you were trying to do? 

I can then forward your feedback to the product manager over this to give future input over design.

Thanks

[Jayaredoubleu]

On 11/22/2019 at 12:38 PM, DatBear said:

In response to your first question there was a design change made after the initial release to instead of displaying the rooms the sessions are playing in just show the transports since that's something you can immediately take action on when coming to this view. What rooms were playing in is considered more secondary information that could be collapsed by default to preserve space per session. 

As for your second question the media source not going to now playing when clicking on it is intentional. Since a session playing can represent multiple rooms that can all be controlled differently for the same session (ie muted/volume level differences), it's a more complicated visual problem to come up with an intuitive experience for the user while showing all the details we currently show for the now playing view to also bring in the various controls and states for each room that session is streaming to. We opted for solving that issue, for now, by just making the now playing room based when you want to go to the currently streaming session that the given room is participating in.

We would be interested in feedback you have about this experience. If you preferred how it was before, what did you like about it? How did you use that information to accomplish what you were trying to do? 

I can then forward your feedback to the product manager over this to give future input over design.

Thanks

Thank you for the update, and I understand.

Here are my requests:

1) When a single room is playing - display that room and remove the "collapse function".  When multiple rooms are playing, keep it identical as it is now (e.g. add the house icon with number of rooms, add the collapse function to show volume of all active rooms (Similar to how Sonos and all other major multi-room systems do it).   There is no need to hit the collapse icon only to find out that 1 room is playing. In addition, there is no value if the slider in the collapse view is the same as the master slider.   I get why this makes sense if you have more than one room playing (and I wouldn't change anything for multi-rooms).   However, its very frustrating and cumbersome if you have a lot of single zone audio sources playing.   In my case (and I assume many users) -  It is quite common in my house to have 3-5 single audio sources playing simultaneously. (e.g. Wife listen to music in kitchen, me in office, my kids watching a movie in the basement, other kid listening to music in their room).   Based off current functionality, its a lot of clicking to see what music is playing where.  I have to manually click on each one just to see what room it is playing in. 

2) PLEASE allow an ability to click on the session playing and have it automatically take you to the transport controls for that active session.  I would suggest having it be the icon in the top left, but I am open to other ideas.   Lets say we use the icon in the top left as the button to transition to the room, then here are the two rules that could be set up:

1. If a Single zone is playing, jump to the audio controls for that room. 
2. If multiple zones are playing, jump to the room that initiated the music.  (and if that couldn't be done, honestly it wouldn't matter which room you jumped to, they would all control the same grouped audio zone).   As an example, If I start Pandora in kitchen and then later add two other rooms.   No matter which of the 3 rooms I go to, they are all controlling the same audio zone.  

It is very cumbersome and frustrating to go to sessions, see something playing and then have to click the following 4 buttons to change the music/video:

1. Click Home icon (or back)
2. Click top room list
3. Select desired room   (I recognized this could be done by swiping left/right to a favorite room, but depending on how many rooms you have Favorited - it could take longer)
4. Click on audio icon at bottom of screen

All this, just to get to an audio source that was showing in my sessions list.   In my case, its common for me to start music in one room, then pull up the OS Navigator to change rooms to do something (e.g. turn on a light scene, change thermostat, do something with security, etc.).   When this happens - I have to follow the steps listed above to get back to my "active audio session" in order to change the station or thumbs up/thumbs down a station (Which I do all the time).   In addition, Its also common for me to have music playing in one room, and go to another room (e.g. our playroom with the nanny) and want to change the station.  In order to do so, I have to go through the above steps.   I would Love the ability to just pull up the C4 app, hit sessions, then hit active session, and DONE!   Why is this useful? Because it doesn't matter what room I last used - its the exact same steps to get to audio/video controls

3) Please add the current time and total time back again in for the audio controls.    Right now you currently ONLY display the progress bar.  Depending on the album art (e.g. white background) - it  be very difficult to even know a progress bar exists.  In addition, it is hard for people to know how long the song is.   This is very useful for people who have long continuations tracks (E.g. some classical music songs or live music can be very long).  It would be very useful to see how long the song is and how much time is left.   This used to be displayed in OS2, and is still currently displayed on every major system on the market (including Sonos). 

Summary: 

In my household, we listen to audio/watch TV every day in our house, and is our primary interface with Control4.  Generally speaking, I say we pull up the app 3-10 times a day just to control music throughout our house.  It appears Control4 OS3 is attempting to adopt some of the "look and feel" of Sonos, especially knowing you both use the same icons now.  Sonos already has all the features I am listing out here, so obviously they are desired by customers.   And, honestly, I can't see anyone really objecting to having them, as they don't impact anything negatively.  

Please consider these updates in the future!   I really am a huge fan of C4, so everything I suggest is to make the platform and experience better.

If you would like to talk more about this (or other ideas) PLEASE let me know.  I love to be a part of market research and customer experience surveys. 

Look forward to hearing from you,

Jeff

 

 

 

[Matt Lowe]

1 hour ago, Jayaredoubleu said:

 

2) PLEASE allow an ability to click on the session playing and have it automatically take you to the transport controls for that active session.

 

If you collapse the active rooms the transport controls are under the volume.

[Jayaredoubleu]

1 hour ago, Matt Lowe said:

If you collapse the active rooms the transport controls are under the volume.

Matt,

    I am aware, but that doesn't solve the problem.   The issue is when I hit the sessions button, I can't tell what room the sessions are win unless I hit the collapse button to see the volume controls for each room. 

[Jonathan, C4 Engineer]

18 hours ago, Jayaredoubleu said:

Thank you for the update, and I understand.

Here are my requests:

1) When a single room is playing - display that room and remove the "collapse function".  When multiple rooms are playing, keep it identical as it is now (e.g. add the house icon with number of rooms, add the collapse function to show volume of all active rooms (Similar to how Sonos and all other major multi-room systems do it).   There is no need to hit the collapse icon only to find out that 1 room is playing. In addition, there is no value if the slider in the collapse view is the same as the master slider.   I get why this makes sense if you have more than one room playing (and I wouldn't change anything for multi-rooms).   However, its very frustrating and cumbersome if you have a lot of single zone audio sources playing.   In my case (and I assume many users) -  It is quite common in my house to have 3-5 single audio sources playing simultaneously. (e.g. Wife listen to music in kitchen, me in office, my kids watching a movie in the basement, other kid listening to music in their room).   Based off current functionality, its a lot of clicking to see what music is playing where.  I have to manually click on each one just to see what room it is playing in. 

2) PLEASE allow an ability to click on the session playing and have it automatically take you to the transport controls for that active session.  I would suggest having it be the icon in the top left, but I am open to other ideas.   Lets say we use the icon in the top left as the button to transition to the room, then here are the two rules that could be set up:

1. If a Single zone is playing, jump to the audio controls for that room. 
2. If multiple zones are playing, jump to the room that initiated the music.  (and if that couldn't be done, honestly it wouldn't matter which room you jumped to, they would all control the same grouped audio zone).   As an example, If I start Pandora in kitchen and then later add two other rooms.   No matter which of the 3 rooms I go to, they are all controlling the same audio zone.  

It is very cumbersome and frustrating to go to sessions, see something playing and then have to click the following 4 buttons to change the music/video:

1. Click Home icon (or back)
2. Click top room list
3. Select desired room   (I recognized this could be done by swiping left/right to a favorite room, but depending on how many rooms you have Favorited - it could take longer)
4. Click on audio icon at bottom of screen

All this, just to get to an audio source that was showing in my sessions list.   In my case, its common for me to start music in one room, then pull up the OS Navigator to change rooms to do something (e.g. turn on a light scene, change thermostat, do something with security, etc.).   When this happens - I have to follow the steps listed above to get back to my "active audio session" in order to change the station or thumbs up/thumbs down a station (Which I do all the time).   In addition, Its also common for me to have music playing in one room, and go to another room (e.g. our playroom with the nanny) and want to change the station.  In order to do so, I have to go through the above steps.   I would Love the ability to just pull up the C4 app, hit sessions, then hit active session, and DONE!   Why is this useful? Because it doesn't matter what room I last used - its the exact same steps to get to audio/video controls

3) Please add the current time and total time back again in for the audio controls.    Right now you currently ONLY display the progress bar.  Depending on the album art (e.g. white background) - it  be very difficult to even know a progress bar exists.  In addition, it is hard for people to know how long the song is.   This is very useful for people who have long continuations tracks (E.g. some classical music songs or live music can be very long).  It would be very useful to see how long the song is and how much time is left.   This used to be displayed in OS2, and is still currently displayed on every major system on the market (including Sonos). 

Summary: 

In my household, we listen to audio/watch TV every day in our house, and is our primary interface with Control4.  Generally speaking, I say we pull up the app 3-10 times a day just to control music throughout our house.  It appears Control4 OS3 is attempting to adopt some of the "look and feel" of Sonos, especially knowing you both use the same icons now.  Sonos already has all the features I am listing out here, so obviously they are desired by customers.   And, honestly, I can't see anyone really objecting to having them, as they don't impact anything negatively.  

Please consider these updates in the future!   I really am a huge fan of C4, so everything I suggest is to make the platform and experience better.

If you would like to talk more about this (or other ideas) PLEASE let me know.  I love to be a part of market research and customer experience surveys. 

Look forward to hearing from you,

Jeff

 

 

 

I have forwarded your suggestions to the Product Manager and UX Manager to evaluate and prioritize your suggestion. Thanks for providing it.  

[lippavisual]

Sorry, wrong thread to post this. 

[Jayaredoubleu]

43 minutes ago, DatBear said:

I have forwarded your suggestions to the Product Manager and UX Manager to evaluate and prioritize your suggestion. Thanks for providing it.  

Thank you!   Please let them know I am happy to talk to them about this in more detail.

What is the best path for me to follow-up?

[Jonathan, C4 Engineer]

52 minutes ago, Jayaredoubleu said:

Thank you!   Please let them know I am happy to talk to them about this in more detail.

What is the best path for me to follow-up?

I've already seen a positive response to your suggestions and discussion about prioritization into upcoming releases. That being said we don't pre-announce future work since that's often such a moving target. I included this post link in my communication so they are aware of who you are and if they need more information or want you to beta test a build for us you'll be contacted directly.  Your suggestions were valuable and most likely will help steer the direction of future releases.

[BraydonH]

17 hours ago, Jayaredoubleu said:

Matt,

    I am aware, but that doesn't solve the problem.   The issue is when I hit the sessions button, I can't tell what room the sessions are win unless I hit the collapse button to see the volume controls for each room. 

I also wish when you wen to the seesions page the drop down was automatically selected so I could see each room in the session. I wish it was a toggleable option within the app. This messes people up all the time and I just wished it showed all the rooms in the session by default without having to hit the drop down box.