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Today is the day of the AMA!

The new app design has been out for a week, and most of you have had a chance to get used to the new UI.

Some of you might have questions when you have had a week to get to know the new Sonos App interface. Because of that, we want to give you all a chance to ask some of the people who were integral in its creation and design, the questions that have come to mind while you have used the app.

As we mentioned in the event.

Our panelists will be:

  • Diane Roberts, Senior Director of Software Development
  • Kate Wojogbe, Senior Director of User Experience
  • Tucker Severson, Director of Product Management

It will be hosted on the 14th of May from 11:00 until 14:00 GMT -07.

But instead of me telling you what they do and what their role with the app update has been, here are their own introductions:

 

Diane

Diane Roberts is the Senior Director of Software Engineering and Product Management at Sonos responsible for the Sonos Apps. Her group of cross-disciplinary teams build Configuration, Control, and Content experiences on a foundation of Core mobile application technologies. She received dual Bachelors’ of Science in Computer Science and Music from WPI. Diane holds 6 granted patents as a co-inventor.

 

Kate

As Senior Director of User Experience, Kate leads the UX team responsible for Sonos’ home audio hardware, software, and app user experiences. This includes user interfaces on speakers and soundbars, setup for hardware and services, first and third party content experiences, and a variety of methods of control of the Sonos system. Kate graduated from the University of California Los Angeles with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Design.

 

Tucker

Tucker Severson is the Director of Product Management and leads the PM team responsible for the Sonos Apps. Tucker received his BA from Bates College and his MBA from the University of Vermont.

 

We will do our best to answer as many of your questions as possible within the 3-hour window, but we can’t promise to answer every question, especially those you know we can’t discuss.

But if we see a question repeated or a reply getting a lot of likes, don’t worry. We will prioritize those to ensure that many people get the answers they seek.

 

Remember, we can’t talk about things on the roadmap - but if you have questions or feedback about the app redesign, want to know more about our panelists, like their background or favorite band, then the sky is the (cough cough.. NDA) limit!

Thank you, everyone, for participating. We covered as many of the most asked questions as possible. We know tracking the responses wasn't as easy as we had hoped. But we wanted to let the community air frustrations and have their questions answered.

I got a lot of DMs during the AMA, and I will be sure to answer them when I can. Thanks for reaching out!

Keith and I will work on recapping all the questions and feedback we have responded to, and we will update the post here when that is complete. If we didn't get to your question, don't worry. Keith and I are grabbing all the feedback from this thread, even the things we didn't respond to, and ensuring the right people will see the message. This was the first time we created a live AMA in the community, and we learned a lot for future AMAs.

We appreciate all the feedback and questions you gave through this AMA. It helps us understand your most significant feedback and your reasoning. We hear you, and we will ensure the right teams get your feedback. They are listening.

We look forward to rolling out the updates with features (new and old) as soon as they are ready. Keith shared an overview of the timeline for expecting these features to return to the app. Today was the first update, reintroducing alarms and improving the iOS voiceover.

We look forward to seeing your reactions to our future app developments. We hope you all appreciate the work our developers are putting into making the app as fast and easy to use as possible for the general user.
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What a waste of time. 

is anybody getting anything useful from this joke of an event? I’m not sure why I hoped it would be accessible or at all useful, when Sonos clearly does not care about users who are blind. Many of us have invested a great deal of money into our sound systems and with this update, we now own expensive paper weights

Please drop some emails to your favorite tech sites. This deserves reporting.

Already contacted Ars about 5 pages ago.

Hello I am also totally blind and have been a sonos customer since 2011 and have been delighted with the way the sonos eco system and app have been developed until now, not least because it was very accessible to IOS users using voice-over. Now all of that has gone. Thankfully I haven’t updated the software on my products or the app. I feell like I can’t trust Sonos any more, not least because I’ve spent over £3000 with you over the last 13 years, only to have my current 11 devices rendered nearly useless thanks to this update. so How can I trust Sonos agai? when will you fix all of the accessibility problems with the new app. as a good starting point, could you withdraw the new app and reintroduce the S2 app and appropriate software for speakers and devices and go back to the drawing board with this abomination of a new app? what do you think?

It’s par for the course. An absolute omni-shambles

Even if no one from SONOS ever interacts on this, please ready this one request.  That is to immediately offer a rollback to S2 and then only offer the new app as exactly that a new, optional app.  Faith in SONOS has been broken and it will take a loooong time to inch that faith and loyalty back.

Will we see numbers re-added to the volume adjusters or is Sonos sticking with this UI decision?

@danull  Yes - volume numbers will be returning to this UI. We are continuing to refine our volume UI based on user feedback and will soon be providing an update to these controls.  Volume numbers should be visible now in the grouping menu.

First Answer.  We get numbers back soon.

sonos are Gas-lighting us.

Do you still consider this a courageous step and, more importantly, would you do this again?

Tucker, what’s your favourite cheese?

Will we see numbers re-added to the volume adjusters or is Sonos sticking with this UI decision?

@danull  Yes - volume numbers will be returning to this UI. We are continuing to refine our volume UI based on user feedback and will soon be providing an update to these controls.  Volume numbers should be visible now in the grouping menu.

Will volume numbers be added to the Web app? It's missing from the sliders there which is less than ideal.  

Your update post doesn’t mention the Android widget I and many, many others rely on. When is it coming back?

Will we see numbers re-added to the volume adjusters or is Sonos sticking with this UI decision?

@danull  Yes - volume numbers will be returning to this UI. We are continuing to refine our volume UI based on user feedback and will soon be providing an update to these controls.  Volume numbers should be visible now in the grouping menu.

A REPLY!!

It’s not lost on me (or the team) that this most recent Sonos app update has caused a torrent of feedback topics here on the Community and across the web. We want to make sure you get the most out of the next three hours, so we’ve decided to focus our efforts on the questions with the most likes. Please use likes to “upvote” the question you want answered. By combining similar topics and questions, we will be able to cover more and hopefully cover the wide breadth of conversation you are looking for.

The most asked questions could have been extracted from the last 7 days of community posts ahead of time and given as answers at the start of this AMA thread. Now we we just have many pages in this thread of those same questions being repeated! 

Will we see numbers re-added to the volume adjusters or is Sonos sticking with this UI decision?

@danull  Yes - volume numbers will be returning to this UI. We are continuing to refine our volume UI based on user feedback and will soon be providing an update to these controls.  Volume numbers should be visible now in the grouping menu.

Well done! Now I know I can do something else for FORTY minutes before we get an answer to the next question.

What was the thought process behind releasing the app update in an obviously unfinished state, instead of waiting for critical issues to be resolved?

Thank you @veryblocky @YorkSteve @umiami91. Since you all had similar questions, I’d like to answer them together.

An app is never finished! 

It’s probably a good idea to give you some background. This is a new app - we started from an empty project file. As the project progressed, we stopped investing our time in the old app code. Over time we “cross-faded” our engineering attention into the new app. We need to make the new app be the app going forward so we stop splitting our attention.

We decided that now is the moment to bring you the new app. This is the beginning, and we will be continually iterating going forward. As I said - an app is never finished.

Will we see numbers re-added to the volume adjusters or is Sonos sticking with this UI decision?

@danull  Yes - volume numbers will be returning to this UI. We are continuing to refine our volume UI based on user feedback and will soon be providing an update to these controls.  Volume numbers should be visible now in the grouping menu.

A REPLY!!

Great start Sonos team! Now, focus on reducing the business jargon.  Tell it how it is. 

Are Sonos customers going to be paid for doing this QA work for you? 
How do we invoice for that? 

When will the app and website support the ability to do the same features as before this version, let alone add any new ones?

I have been a Sonos user since 2007 (no typo). This release is the first time so many features I used literally every day have been removed and I am upset and disappointed after so many years of carefully curated features being added and supported for so long.

Will My Library be added back to Global search?

@Richard Schiffman Yes! We will be adding your local music library to search in the coming weeks.

People of sonos, you are an absolute disgrace!!!

Wherever this AMA is taking place, I bet the only participants are:

  • Diane Roberts, Senior Director of Software Development
  • Kate Wojogbe, Senior Director of User Experience
  • Tucker Severson, Director of Product Management

I wonder why they don’t wonder that they are in the wrong place.

What was the thought process behind releasing the app update in an obviously unfinished state, instead of waiting for critical issues to be resolved?

Thank you @veryblocky @YorkSteve @umiami91. Since you all had similar questions, I’d like to answer them together.

An app is never finished! 

It’s probably a good idea to give you some background. This is a new app - we started from an empty project file. As the project progressed, we stopped investing our time in the old app code. Over time we “cross-faded” our engineering attention into the new app. We need to make the new app be the app going forward so we stop splitting our attention.

We decided that now is the moment to bring you the new app. This is the beginning, and we will be continually iterating going forward. As I said - an app is never finished.

OMG. Is this REALLY how it’s going to be? 
Please don’t do this. 
 

Ok, I am leaving now. My question

 

Why did you think it was appropriate to call an AMA and then not show or answer questions? I feel for your hard-working support teams, they are probably trying to do their best and facing hostile questions.

 

Asking people to give up their time and then not show isn’t going to help the situation. You are imo turning a bad situation into a crisis. Please can you be clear about when and how you will respond to some of the very legitimate questions here. I can give you a pass on any of the insults masquerading as questions, but there are some very insightful and appropriate questions which should be worhy of a repsonse. Or let us know that you have to postpone the AMA due to emergency meetings or otherwise.  Give your moderators something to convey as this silence is just breeding hostility. We can’t all be happy but we can be better informed - even if the answer is - things haven’t gone to plan and we are rapidly having execuitive meetings on some critical issues which is foring us to delay our public events.

Patrick Spence retweeted this last month:


So, why is Sonos management not showing up?

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