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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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Can’t figure out how to launch it..


When alarms was able to be added back as soon as today, why was the app released when it was in such an incomplete state nearly a week ago? 
 


Terrible disservice to many loyal customers who previously were able to serve local files from networked drives!  Streaming is nice, but it is not the entire universe!


Please describe what the thought processes was, going into the re-design. I understand the value of launching something new, but as a designer, I also understand that function always outweighs design.


will the focus be on systems that  are now unusable, or will you first add lost functionality


If one was part of the Beta program - of course we can’t say if we might be because of the NDA.

Would we have seen an invite to test before release?


Is the Board of Directors joining?


Does the new app interfaces with the speakers on the LAN or over the Web?


My favorite thing about the update is I can now ask my Sonos to play a song, album, genre, or artist using my voice. Thank you very much! 


setting aside all the “why did you do this release like this”, can you tell us how you will ensure it wont happen in the future, and what the plan is to address customer input in a more coherent way


How do the software decisions give hope to the future of Sonos? There has to be fear from Sonos that the poor user experiences will lead to business issues financially. I personally can’t in good faith recommend Sonos or be bothered to buy more products.


Are you going to answer any questions?


If Sonos claims to take accessibility seriously and aim to build listening experiences that everyone can enjoy, why did you think it was a good idea to leave blind users without a working app for at least two weeks? Especially when you were fully aware the app was broken with screen readers?
As your team was aware that you would be locking out blind customers at launch, why didn't you hold off on releasing the app until accessibility was implemented?
Will you be offering full refunds to blind users who are currently unable to use the products they paid for?
How does Sonos plan to regain the trust of it's blind customers, who are still without a working and fully accessible app? Do you realize how much you have lost the trust  of the blind community?
 


Please address the rationale behind the removal of sleep timers and alarms. You must have telemetry showing that these were very heavily used features of the app. And yet now they are gone.


why can’t I play custom radio streams anymore? that’s what I’ve been using my Sonos system 95% of the time for the last 13 years


Why wasn't it clearly communicated before the release that almost all features will be missing? Because of this lack of communication, it feels like you forgot about all these features! 


What were the determined MVP features and why were truly integral functions to all music playback omitted in the 80.xx updates?


What is being done to improve cloud capacity for the web app and the device communication? I’ve been seeing a lot of ISE errors on the web lately and this appears to be due to overcapacity of the the web UX. The response time on the web UX to the devices also appears slow. 

Additionally, will the iPad UX be made available for install on the Mac App Store? Seems to make sense.

-- Jason Perlow, Sr. Contributing Writer, ZDNET

 

https://www.zdnet.com/article/sonos-new-s2-app-simplifies-audio-control-but-theres-a-catch-or-two/

 

 


Given a number of important features haven't yet been added to the new app (e.g. snooze, timers, queue management), why couldn't you release the new app as a public beta/preview and keep the old app available until those features get added?


Why wasn’t the recent app offered as a “S3”, giving people the option to have a new interface & new features, but also allowing those that needed existing features to keep them?

A list that gave the pros & cons of staying on S2 or moving to S3 would have given the community choice, and allowed the developers to ask the S2 holdouts “What features do you need us to have in S3 to get you to move to it?”


Where is the link to the AMA session?

This is it I think. 


Is there a video link somewhere?


Can you please describe the reasoning for releasing the new app, which doesn’t have all the features as the previous app, despite advertisements indicating the new app would still have all the features?

 

 


So, so many of us are in mourning for our lost capabilities in the new app (play-next, library search and more) and are upset they were stripped from us without warning (you even told us nothing would be worse in the earlier publicity). So

  • what was the reason you didn't make this an optional new app while it was still evolving like you did for the S1 -> S2 update? Then us existing customers could stay happily waiting while your target customers could delight in your new design.
  • will you take the old v16.1 and put it back in the app stores (maybe as “Sonos Legacy” or something) until you have restored all the capabilities you have removed from us?

Can we have a rollback right now?