Retired Sonos Staff

Interview

Sonos App Redesign AMA

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
May 14, 2024
770 replies
65998 views

The New Sonos App - Community AMA Recap post is now live!

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.

This topic has been closed for further comments. You can use the search bar to find a similar topic, or create a new one by clicking Create Topic at the top of the page.

Show previous replies

A

AlohaHawkeyes

Lyricist II

I’m guessing the few and far between “answers” nay responses are because they have to go through their lawyers so they don’t open themselves up to (more) legal action…

K

kjb1989

Lyricist I

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.

@Bliss752 The refreshed UI design is rooted in the needs that we’ve been hearing from our listeners for years. We heard from users that the information architecture of the S2 app felt like work, particularly in navigating between multiple tabs to get core jobs done. The intent of the new app home feed is to put the most useful content and controls immediately within thumb’s reach, offering quick access to the content that means most to users, and enabling them to drive what is prioritized in their personal home experience.

“offering quick access to the content that means most to users” - you took away local libraries.

A

attack7

Contributor I

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.

@Bliss752 The refreshed UI design is rooted in the needs that we’ve been hearing from our listeners for years. We heard from users that the information architecture of the S2 app felt like work, particularly in navigating between multiple tabs to get core jobs done. The intent of the new app home feed is to put the most useful content and controls immediately within thumb’s reach, offering quick access to the content that means most to users, and enabling them to drive what is prioritized in their personal home experience.

If this is the case, why are we still forced to have Sonos Radio as a source if we never use it? Certainly having that present isn’t serving my priorities, it’s serving Sonos’

Bumper

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.

We know this is a lie as third party apps like SonoPhone work perfectly well and it hasn’t been updated in a year.

Roll back the app, get your crap together.

S

simoncoles

Lyricist I

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?

I suspect they don’t have a plan but there are more than a few ambulance-chasing lawyers are looking forward to helping them have one...

R

r0seb

Enthusiast II

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.

@Bliss752 The refreshed UI design is rooted in the needs that we’ve been hearing from our listeners for years. We heard from users that the information architecture of the S2 app felt like work, particularly in navigating between multiple tabs to get core jobs done. The intent of the new app home feed is to put the most useful content and controls immediately within thumb’s reach, offering quick access to the content that means most to users, and enabling them to drive what is prioritized in their personal home experience.

Thanks for the reply @KateW - but I think that the main part of the (implied) question still needs addressing - what about the functionality?

R

RJSUK

Enthusiast II

I've never known a company release an app "upgrade" with so many existing KEY FEATURES missing, with the promise that they'll return over time. Bonkers!

M

Moxey

Lyricist II

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.

Our needs should have been met in the initial release - not in an after tail-chase.

S

SteveG63

Enthusiast I

Dear Tucker

After a week of negativity and nearly an hour of silence, THIS is all you have? Mumbo jumbo?

Essentially you know better than me because I don't *develop* apps? And it's ReAlLy dIFfICuLt.....

You are a digrace and your firm could use some Comms experience to go alongside common sense.

Remember folks, these are Senior Director and Director level folks at Sonos. Can you imagine what’s going on at lowly Management level lol.

Sonos user since 2008. (3) Connects, (2) Connect Amps, (2) Play 1, (2) Play 3s, (1) Play 5, (1) Arc, (1) Sub, (1) Symfonisk

DianeRoberts

Sonos Employee

Sonos now claims that some of the most serious defects will be corrected in the 21 May release, but hopefully the panel can understand that there are a lot of blind people who can’t trust Sonos anymore. Given that Sonos got it so horribly wrong with this current release, why should we expect anything better in the next?

Will Sonos offer an apology to its blind users and accept that it got this wrong, and will Sonos commit to creating a Chief Accessibility Officer as a tangible commitment to ensuring this never happens again?

@jmosen

Thank you for your heartfelt feedback.

We invested our user experience and engineering energy on supporting VoiceOver throughout this project. Unfortunately near the end, we took our eye off the ball and missed a couple of key bugs. Those bug fixes have been shipped in a release today.

That doesn’t mean we’re done. We have more that we want to do and will do to fine-tune the experience. This is the same kind of fine-tuning we are doing for the visual experience. In a visual UI that means adjusting the gutters between items on screen. In a spoken UI it means adding more hints about how to navigate. We look forward to tweaking those and making the experience get continually better.

I understand that we have to rebuild your trust. We will only be able to do that by improving the experience. Any words we say will be incomplete. I am sorry that we missed this.

Our next step involves building a hearty beta community of vision impaired users. Today we have 30 visually impaired users on the beta of the next version of the app. The next version already has several improvements beyond the bug fixes we shipped today.

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Diane

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