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Interview

Sonos App Redesign AMA

Sonos App Redesign AMA

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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770 replies

U
Userlevel 7
Badge +3

I do appreciate the fact that Sonos doesn’t often leave products behind.  I get the break with S1 and S2; I don’t get the decision to move off SonosNet.  The statement regarding “newer WiFi protocols” just feels like a cop-out.  

DianeRoberts
Userlevel 4
Badge

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.

@CacheCoherence - we never intended to ship without Alarm Settings.

(I am copying this in since the threading is difficult to follow here)

On the morning of the app launch, we discovered a data corruption error around the new Alarms APIs. The corruption could cause alarms to go off in the wrong room at the wrong volume with the wrong content! In order to save your alarms, we made the difficult decision to remotely disable the alarm settings feature and then completely lock it out. It allowed us to make sure your alarms stayed as they were - but at the steep cost of taking away your ability to change them yourself.

The team rallied to make sure we could turn this feature back on safely. You can have Alarm Settings back right now!

  1. Update your app to:
    1. iOS: 80.00.08 - available now in the App Store
    2. Android: 80.00.05 - available now in the Play Store
  2. Update your firmware to 79.0-52294 - available now via the Sonos App:
    1. Tap the settings gear in the top right
    2. Select “Manage” next to your system name
    3. Select System Updates
    4. Select Check for Updates
  3. Launch the Sonos app twice in order to guarantee we fetch the latest feature flags:
    1. Start the Sonos app
    2. Force quit the app
    3. Start the Sonos app again
webmink
Userlevel 6
Badge +5

Having a lot of perfectly good equipment resold on the “grey market” is very bad for revenue (look what it did to Sun Microsystems). Given so many customers have said they no longer trust Sonos after the way they have been treated in this app update, will you be taking steps to inhibit grey market sales like you did before (by bricking systems, for example)?

Support musicians by buying music instead of streaming.
G
Userlevel 6
Badge +1

My question (as this is an AMA) is this: Do you factor in this loss of trust? Has this been costed? Was there a risk benefit analysis of releasing the app in such an unready state? Or did the the response to this app come as a surprise to you?

@superbob

We did factor in a risk analysis about delaying some features along with the timing of the release. That risk-benefit analysis was carefully done across many decisions about what to prioritize.

One thing I would like to restate from an earlier reply - we never intended to ship without Alarm Settings.

On the morning of the app launch, we discovered a data corruption error around the new Alarms APIs. The corruption could cause alarms to go off in the wrong room at the wrong volume with the wrong content! In order to save your alarms, we made the difficult decision to remotely disable the alarm settings feature and then completely lock it out. It allowed us to make sure your alarms stayed as they were - but at the steep cost of taking away your ability to change them yourself.

The team rallied to make sure we could turn this feature back on safely - and today we are so delighted to say that we have re-enabled alarm settings. To get this feature, you must do a full system update. 

We will continue to evaluate the impact of new and returning features, and have committed to a timeline for the short term.

Again.  Just the alarm as an example, and how well you’ve all done in getting that released today.  WHAT ABOUT EVERYTHING ELSE WHICH IS MISSING?

rvk
Userlevel 2
Badge +1

Please upvote this post: Can you please provide an immediate easy way to rollback the mobile app to the prior version for those who can’t make the current version meet their needs.

Thanks @bkk. Also, @nelliott and others had similar questions.

Rolling back to the previous version of the Sonos app is likely to cause issues. As Sonos continues to advance forward with new updates to the firmware, the old apps will fall out of compatibility quickly. Our priority is to release improvements to the Sonos app rapidly to address your needs.


I think I’ll be upgrading my speakers to the S1 app and when they fail I’ll be moving to a different music system. There is nothing useful for me in the new app and I’ve lost trust in Sonos as a brand.

Unfortunately downgrading to S1 doesn't work correctly in version 80.x. and with 16.1 it says you need the latest version to downgrade to S1. In want this too so I hope this is added back soon.

 

A

HelloI did the update and there’s still no alarm function back in the app. What do you suggest ???

Make sure you’ve done the update to the speakers as well.

D
Userlevel 5
Badge +1

What has been the general mood of the Sonos team/staff since the new app was released? Was the team surprised at the negative reception or was it expected?

[…] Any time we change an experience or delay a feature, we know that some people will have negative sentiments. We also saw in our usability testing that people appreciated the new user interface, adaptability, and faster time to music. 

We have been reading your posts and seeing your feedback.

Once the release went live, the mood could be described as “energized.”  The activity on the team is high as people share what they’ve built for the next releases. We are excited that we can bring these continuous regular updates. It’s easier and faster now for us to share what we’ve built with you. That started with today’s release and will continue on May 21st with releases to follow.

This seems tone deaf.

You’re right, there’s always going to be some degree of negative reception when making changes — “who moved my cheese?”

The question is whether the improvements are a bigger step forward than the limitations are a step back. Are there going to be more positive responses, or negative ones?

Personally, I’m in the Steve Jobs mindset of, paraphrasing, “design isn’t how a thing looks, it’s how a thing works.” If a product works well, then people can overlook the interface shortcomings; if the product doesn’t work well, then no amount of interface glitziness can make up for that. 

It has to have been obvious to people there that the new version broke more than it fixed. This is a radical rewrite of an established product, and it has a laundry list of shortcomings compared to its predecessor, as many posts here, on Reddit, and elsewhere have documented. 

My question: does anyone there have veto authority on a bad release? How bad to the bugs need to have been to compel someone sufficiently senior to step back and say that this product, as it currently existed, was not good enough to release to the public with the Sonos name? 

Some in this forum have suggested that launching a new S3 app could’ve made sense. This seems like a good idea, because it could have offered users a preview of where Sonos is going, while retaining the ability to stick with the more or less stable S2 app until the user decides to switch over. 

Of course, it’s too late to do that now, alas, but surely in hindsight it has to be clear that this would’ve been a better way forward. 

At this point, we’re all stuck. Your users are left with a semi-functional system, and your software team is stuck with a huge backlog of bugfixes to rush out the door. 

Good luck. You need it.

 

You ask if anybody has the veto.  The responses from Sonos in this AMA demonstrates that everybody just keeps smiling at each other and spend the days congratulating themselves for a job well done.  Nobody has the gumption to say “sorry, but isn’t this less functional than before?”  

I feel that the team who wrote this app and its management are so far removed from the real world that we are all now lost.

I did hope that this AMA would straighten things out.  It has done the opposite.  It has demonstrated that Team Sonos is just so far up their own posteriors that they cannot see that the world outside is ditching their Sonos equipment.

When you buy into a product that is software based and has the higher price tag for those reasons along with simplicity, it should absolutely be fully functional. I only first purchased my products last year. If I knew this was going to be where things were going, I’d have dealt with my hardwired system.

M
Userlevel 4

 

We did factor in a risk analysis about delaying some features along with the timing of the release. That risk-benefit analysis was carefully done across many decisions about what to prioritize.

One thing I would like to restate from an earlier reply - we never intended to ship without Alarm Settings.

On the morning of the app launch, we discovered a data corruption error around the new Alarms APIs. The corruption could cause alarms to go off in the wrong room at the wrong volume with the wrong content! In order to save your alarms, we made the difficult decision to remotely disable the alarm settings feature and then completely lock it out. It allowed us to make sure your alarms stayed as they were - but at the steep cost of taking away your ability to change them yourself.

The team rallied to make sure we could turn this feature back on safely - and today we are so delighted to say that we have re-enabled alarm settings. To get this feature, you must do a full system update. 

We will continue to evaluate the impact of new and returning features, and have committed to a timeline for the short term.

 

 

Do you really not see how stupid this is?

You clearly had many, many opportunities to do the actually “courageous” thing and just delay the update as it was CLEARLY not ready. This absolute refusal to admit to the reality that Sonos botched this is only making things worse from a PR perspective 

B
Userlevel 4
Badge +1

Can you please explain to me how I am supposed to trust the leadership of this company? 
 

the last week has seen:

-an app marketed as “better” remove core functionality without telling us. 
 

-a chance to receive and review feedback and still sending out promo emails saying the app is better when the consumer base is saying it does jot fulfill user needs. 
 

-a statement praising the company for the release and gaslighting the users who do not like it. 
 

-a statement outlining the dates at which features will be reimplemented meaning you were aware you were marketing a less functionally capable app as “better”

 

-a timeline of “months” to restore core functionality meaning that from the first promo emails on April 23 you knew that the the app would be functionally inferior to what we already had. 
 

-an announcement of an AMA seemingly in response to the overwhelming negative feedback

 

-a failure to host the AMA on a host actually capable of facilitating the conversation 

 

-a stunning lack of participation from the admins 

 

-PR speak in response to the most committed customers voicing legitimate complaints. 
 


frankly, the Sonos app launch was a failure. the response has been condescending, patronizing and flat out insulting. 
 

 

 

CronoCX
Userlevel 4
Badge +3

Could you please keep the option for the boost going as many people don't receive a strong wi fi signal and extenders and boosters just interfere with the signal and having paided out for a booster cant afford to buy speakers to act as a receiver and don't want the look off speakers everywhere. 

Hear, hear!!  While I recognize you’re moving away from Boost in the newer speaker lines, please don’t kill it for our older, SonosNet products.  Taking all that traffic off the main WiFi has been a valuable benefit of Sonos that doesn’t exist elsewhere.

This. SonosNet is great. While I CAN run everything off WiFi, I chose SonosNet because it seemed the best experience.

C
Userlevel 5
Badge +2

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.

@CacheCoherence - we never intended to ship without Alarm Settings.

(I am copying this in since the threading is difficult to follow here)

On the morning of the app launch, we discovered a data corruption error around the new Alarms APIs. The corruption could cause alarms to go off in the wrong room at the wrong volume with the wrong content! In order to save your alarms, we made the difficult decision to remotely disable the alarm settings feature and then completely lock it out. It allowed us to make sure your alarms stayed as they were - but at the steep cost of taking away your ability to change them yourself.

The team rallied to make sure we could turn this feature back on safely. You can have Alarm Settings back right now!

  1. Update your app to:
    1. iOS: 80.00.08 - available now in the App Store
    2. Android: 80.00.05 - available now in the Play Store
  2. Update your firmware to 79.0-52294 - available now via the Sonos App:
    1. Tap the settings gear in the top right
    2. Select “Manage” next to your system name
    3. Select System Updates
    4. Select Check for Updates
  3. Launch the Sonos app twice in order to guarantee we fetch the latest feature flags:
    1. Start the Sonos app
    2. Force quit the app
    3. Start the Sonos app again

OK, I get what happened with alarms. But I have re-read your response several times, and I still don’t see an explanation of what happened to sleep timers in this release.

A

My question (as this is an AMA) is this: Do you factor in this loss of trust? Has this been costed? Was there a risk benefit analysis of releasing the app in such an unready state? Or did the the response to this app come as a surprise to you?

@superbob

We did factor in a risk analysis about delaying some features along with the timing of the release. That risk-benefit analysis was carefully done across many decisions about what to prioritize.

One thing I would like to restate from an earlier reply - we never intended to ship without Alarm Settings.

On the morning of the app launch, we discovered a data corruption error around the new Alarms APIs. The corruption could cause alarms to go off in the wrong room at the wrong volume with the wrong content! In order to save your alarms, we made the difficult decision to remotely disable the alarm settings feature and then completely lock it out. It allowed us to make sure your alarms stayed as they were - but at the steep cost of taking away your ability to change them yourself.

The team rallied to make sure we could turn this feature back on safely - and today we are so delighted to say that we have re-enabled alarm settings. To get this feature, you must do a full system update. 

We will continue to evaluate the impact of new and returning features, and have committed to a timeline for the short term.

Again.  Just the alarm as an example, and how well you’ve all done in getting that released today.  WHAT ABOUT EVERYTHING ELSE WHICH IS MISSING?

Jeez can people stop with the BLOCKCAPS already, learn some netiquette.   Your answer has been posted multiple times:- 

 

Coming soon

  • Additional improvements to screen reader for visually impaired customers: May 21
  • Adding to queue and playing next: early June
  • Sleep timer: mid-June
  • Snooze alarms: mid-June
  • Local music library search and playback: mid-June
  • Update WiFi settings: mid-June
R
Userlevel 5
Badge

App when not on network - no devices
play.sonos.com when not on network - here are all your devices you can play anything you want… 

WHY WOULD YOU ADD THIS?????

B
Userlevel 3

Great you fixed alarms but you still shipped without the ability to change the WiFi network, on a WiFi speaker!

G
Userlevel 7
Badge +10

My question (as this is an AMA) is this: Do you factor in this loss of trust? Has this been costed? Was there a risk benefit analysis of releasing the app in such an unready state? Or did the the response to this app come as a surprise to you?

@superbob

We did factor in a risk analysis about delaying some features along with the timing of the release. That risk-benefit analysis was carefully done across many decisions about what to prioritize.

One thing I would like to restate from an earlier reply - we never intended to ship without Alarm Settings.

On the morning of the app launch, we discovered a data corruption error around the new Alarms APIs. The corruption could cause alarms to go off in the wrong room at the wrong volume with the wrong content! In order to save your alarms, we made the difficult decision to remotely disable the alarm settings feature and then completely lock it out. It allowed us to make sure your alarms stayed as they were - but at the steep cost of taking away your ability to change them yourself.

The team rallied to make sure we could turn this feature back on safely - and today we are so delighted to say that we have re-enabled alarm settings. To get this feature, you must do a full system update. 

We will continue to evaluate the impact of new and returning features, and have committed to a timeline for the short term.

@DianeRoberts you said “we never intended to ship without Alarm Settings” but you did, why?

Can you also clarify why we need a “full system update” I assume that means the App and the Speakers and that sounds pretty drastic for something you are treating so casually. 

E
Userlevel 3
Badge +1

With the new app is there any hope for a setting to enable the center speaker in the era 300s when paired in a surround configuration? 🤞🤞🤞🤞

Chris Devers
Userlevel 5
Badge +1

App when not on network - no devices
play.sonos.com when not on network - here are all your devices you can play anything you want… 

WHY WOULD YOU ADD THIS?????

What, you don’t regularly find it frustrating to be sitting at work or a coffee shop without a way to turn on the music back at home? You’re not elated that this long-unsolved problem now has a solution? Geez…

G
Userlevel 6
Badge +1

My question (as this is an AMA) is this: Do you factor in this loss of trust? Has this been costed? Was there a risk benefit analysis of releasing the app in such an unready state? Or did the the response to this app come as a surprise to you?

@superbob

We did factor in a risk analysis about delaying some features along with the timing of the release. That risk-benefit analysis was carefully done across many decisions about what to prioritize.

One thing I would like to restate from an earlier reply - we never intended to ship without Alarm Settings.

On the morning of the app launch, we discovered a data corruption error around the new Alarms APIs. The corruption could cause alarms to go off in the wrong room at the wrong volume with the wrong content! In order to save your alarms, we made the difficult decision to remotely disable the alarm settings feature and then completely lock it out. It allowed us to make sure your alarms stayed as they were - but at the steep cost of taking away your ability to change them yourself.

The team rallied to make sure we could turn this feature back on safely - and today we are so delighted to say that we have re-enabled alarm settings. To get this feature, you must do a full system update. 

We will continue to evaluate the impact of new and returning features, and have committed to a timeline for the short term.

Again.  Just the alarm as an example, and how well you’ve all done in getting that released today.  WHAT ABOUT EVERYTHING ELSE WHICH IS MISSING?

Jeez can people stop with the BLOCKCAPS already, learn some netiquette.   Your answer has been posted multiple times:- 

 

Coming soon

  • Additional improvements to screen reader for visually impaired customers: May 21
  • Adding to queue and playing next: early June
  • Sleep timer: mid-June
  • Snooze alarms: mid-June
  • Local music library search and playback: mid-June
  • Update WiFi settings: mid-June

Apologies for the caps.  Sorry.

My question about the missing items was not asking ‘when’.  I was linking to the repeated alarm story and asking whether the other missing functionality was removed on the launch day.  Sorry for being unclear.

 

W
Userlevel 3

This has been enlightening, but not the way I’d hoped.  

My next call will be to my money manager: Dump SONO, don’t buy another share.

F
Userlevel 6
Badge +8

What about wrapping up? This AMA was a total disaster, as the new app.

V
Userlevel 7
Badge +5

Ugh this is disgusting.  I have to admit that I didn’t have “Sell all my SONOS gear because the app is a UX train wreck” on my bingo card for 2024. 
 

Your AMA is a joke. 

AMPx2, One SLx6, Play5x2, SUBx2, Play1x2, Move, Roam (Yuck), ARC, PlayBar, Beam, SYMFONISKx2, Awful New App.
J
Userlevel 5
Badge +2

Just had a message from Mike R H saying personal attacks aren’t tolerated. Well I didn’t make a personal attack at all. So wanna explain yourself Mikey boy because I’m about to go all in

DianeRoberts
Userlevel 4
Badge

 

Wait, sorry, I screwed up. Swift native? That means there’s real hope of getting this right on iOS at least, and I’ll let Android users comment too. What parts are Swift and what parts are Flutter? This is crucial for accessibility.

@Nick6489 

The only portion of the experience that is in Flutter is what we call “wizards”. The cards that pop up from the bottom of the screen to either walk you through setting up your products or give you tips about how things work. With respect to accessibility, I can share that the wizards are reading the screen content on iOS. I just checked personally on today’s release.

Everything else is native UI. The home screen, search, browse, system view, now playing view, queue view, settings, etc.

One other piece of technology we use is a secure web view for areas that require authentication.

Overall, we think of this as one experience. We will not be satisfied until the entire experience is accessible.

J
Userlevel 4
Badge

The new app left me without my carefully curated URL-based internet radio favorites. How is this supposed to be accomplished in the new app?

To add radio stations via a custom url, you will need to add the station in the Tune-In app first. Then you can add this station as a favorite from the Tune-In app in Sonos. I hope that helps!

@tuckerseverson , I have many custom URL stations that show up properly in the TuneIn app.  Only a fraction of them appear in the TuneIn section of the new Sonos iOS app.  They do all still appear on the desktop Sonos controller that I have not updated (and may never, unless forced to).  Also, in the iOS app, the station names are truncated with no way to read beyond the first word, and no way to change them.  The TuneIn app (new) also does not have a way to change the names!

B
Userlevel 2

Let’s talk about screen equity.

This is from my wall-mounted iPad. 

 

 

Mine does not look like that - I have full screen.

Apple Music generated “playlist”. Same on 3 iPad. Sad...

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