Retired Sonos Staff

Interview

Sonos App Redesign AMA

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
May 14, 2024
770 replies
65996 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

S

SJBill

Lyricist III

I noticed that the re-introduction of alarms actually required an update to Sonos devices as well as the app today. Does this mean that the new UI revamp was in fact much more than just a revamp to the UI? Are there currently bigger changes happening on the device side as well?

@Aleksander H

The app is definitely a revamp, but it’s not just the UI that changed! This new app is using new features on the speaker firmware and new cloud services as well. Let me share a bit more about what happened with 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.

But that’s not how we expect to introduce features every time. We have built the new app to be able to update independently of the speaker firmware. As we go forward, you can expect us to bring out new features with smaller, less intrusive, updates.

The courageous thing to do would be to delay the app launch until the issue could really be fixed.

Sonos is mission-critical for us in many ways - that’s why you have so many angry customers here.

You need to treat your product the way NASA treats launching astronauts to space: if anything is known to be incomplete, you delay the launch to fix it; you don’t waive requirements in order to launch on time.

F

fok_1

Enthusiast I

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.

Why did you release it anyway that day?

S

SonosSpotifyLover

Lyricist III

I just want to say there has been allot of negativity surrounding the new app launch. I just want to say the app is fantastic. I've been using it everyday since it came out last week. I know there is some future additions coming in the next weeks and will just be patient with the future roll out. Thank you Diane, Kate, Tucker, and the rest of the Sonos development team for everything you do.

This is a joke - correct? We should be patient while we wait to get back to where we were?

I suppose if you have one speaker and use Sonos Radio alone, it’s probably a great release.

When you have 20 speakers, a NAS, and multiple streaming services, it is...not so much.

First off you obviously have no idea how to click on a persons profile to see how many Sonos products a user has or you would of not made such a ridiculous statement. Also if you had clicked on my profile you would known I DON'T use Sonos Radio. So next time do your homework.

Second over 20 speakers? Bro you don't have 20 speakers so stop over exaggerating your circumstance. You ain't Peter Pee.

Third, no this not a joke. I've have multiple Sonos products also multiple streaming services. Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, Sirius XM, Home Theater setup, etc. All of them are working great since the 80.0 update.

Fourth, people are complaining about the missing features like the alarms, personal playlists, etc on the Sonos app. Who uses Sonos speakers for an alarm when we all have cell phones where we can customize what we wake up to in 2024? Many streaming services have personal playlists that you can customize for yourself. Why the heck would anyone want to take up tons of memory on their phone with music when it's available on streaming music services? Also who the heck buys music anymore? This isn't 1994 anymore. These features that are missing are for people that don't know it's the 21st century.

Not that I NEED to prove anything to you, @SonosSpotifyLover, I’m going to choose to because you’re being a dick. Some people DO use their systems different than you do and you saying “It’s 2024 and use your watch and quit complaining about your systems doing less than they did yesterday if they work at all”. That’s 28 if you don’t want to do the math. Okay, okay, TWO are Boosts, but some of us can back up what we say in public. So, maybe STFU.

Prove anything? Come on bro you came at me with saying I only had one speaker. Next time look at yourself before attacking people online.

Lastly look who couldn't contain themselves without using explicit language. Have fun with your comment's being deleted.

D

danull

Enthusiast I

I noticed that the re-introduction of alarms actually required an update to Sonos devices as well as the app today. Does this mean that the new UI revamp was in fact much more than just a revamp to the UI? Are there currently bigger changes happening on the device side as well?

@Aleksander H

The app is definitely a revamp, but it’s not just the UI that changed! This new app is using new features on the speaker firmware and new cloud services as well. Let me share a bit more about what happened with 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.

But that’s not how we expect to introduce features every time. We have built the new app to be able to update independently of the speaker firmware. As we go forward, you can expect us to bring out new features with smaller, less intrusive, updates.

We made the ***wrong*** decision to remotely disable the alarm settings feature and then completely lock it out ………

The right decision was to delay the app launch...nobody needed the new app so desperately you needed to make any kind of “difficult” decision to push forward with it.

That’s the biggest problem here, no acknowledgement from Sonos that they messed up. Doubling down on everything that’s happened. How are you going to prevent this from happening again? It sounds like Sonos is perfectly willing to go through this again in the future, which is very disturbing.

tuckerseverson

Sonos Employee

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!

Product at Sonos

G

Gaham

Headliner I

I noticed that the re-introduction of alarms actually required an update to Sonos devices as well as the app today. Does this mean that the new UI revamp was in fact much more than just a revamp to the UI? Are there currently bigger changes happening on the device side as well?

@Aleksander H

The app is definitely a revamp, but it’s not just the UI that changed! This new app is using new features on the speaker firmware and new cloud services as well. Let me share a bit more about what happened with 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.

But that’s not how we expect to introduce features every time. We have built the new app to be able to update independently of the speaker firmware. As we go forward, you can expect us to bring out new features with smaller, less intrusive, updates.

Wow @DianeRoberts did you just admit that on the morning of the release you knew that important functionality was flawed so you pulled the function not the App?

R

RJSUK

Enthusiast II

Please add the option to remove Sonos Radio, just like every other service.

KateW

Sonos Employee

Hi AMA team!
I almost always use my Sonos devices in groups, and with the new app, handling of group volumes is worse. Not only does it not change in real-time like the former app, you end up with a UI pop-up on top of the volume slider I am using to adjust the volume. See the video below of before and after. Will this be fixed in a future app update?
New app:

Old App:

@mdpeterman I recognize that we have a ways to go to improve this tablet layout. Full stop. We will be continuing to improve this display and other UI improvements for tablets. No exact timing yet to share here, but the team shares your desire to make this and other layout improvements.

UX at Sonos

G

Graham Kelly

Enthusiast I

I noticed that the re-introduction of alarms actually required an update to Sonos devices as well as the app today. Does this mean that the new UI revamp was in fact much more than just a revamp to the UI? Are there currently bigger changes happening on the device side as well?

@Aleksander H

The app is definitely a revamp, but it’s not just the UI that changed! This new app is using new features on the speaker firmware and new cloud services as well. Let me share a bit more about what happened with 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.

But that’s not how we expect to introduce features every time. We have built the new app to be able to update independently of the speaker firmware. As we go forward, you can expect us to bring out new features with smaller, less intrusive, updates.

That says a lot about the Sonos testing regime. If data corruption is only found on the day of the launch, then there was insufficient testing.

But that’s just the alarm function. What about all the other missing functions. Did these fail as well on the launch day and therefore have to be removed?

Please stop treating your customers as fools. Do as they ask. Release 16.1 as an official version. Like you did for S1 to S2. This whole story can then be put to bed. I’m using 16.1 perfectly soundly still. Allow others to do likewise.

R

Ryan Bland

Lyricist III

I noticed that the re-introduction of alarms actually required an update to Sonos devices as well as the app today. Does this mean that the new UI revamp was in fact much more than just a revamp to the UI? Are there currently bigger changes happening on the device side as well?

@Aleksander H

The app is definitely a revamp, but it’s not just the UI that changed! This new app is using new features on the speaker firmware and new cloud services as well. Let me share a bit more about what happened with 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.

But that’s not how we expect to introduce features every time. We have built the new app to be able to update independently of the speaker firmware. As we go forward, you can expect us to bring out new features with smaller, less intrusive, updates.

How did it get past QA that i assume should have been happening for the last few months if there was a corruption issue with your new api? if this had been communicated to the community with the update that went out shortly after the 80.x release there would have been so much less blowback on the issue but it wasnt and no info was given as to why we couldnt see alarms or even turn them off if needed… Communication is key

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Diane

Kate

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