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Mike H
Retired Sonos Staff
May 14, 2024
Interview

Sonos App Redesign AMA

  • May 14, 2024
  • 770 replies
  • 65994 views
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

Lyricist II
May 14, 2024

The one thing I'm grateful for in this ama has been other users explaining how to roll back. The new app has completely kneecapped my system. Used to use alarms to queue my child that it was time to get ready for bed/nap... alarms are gone. Only used local music library... local music library is gone. My speakers only show up half the time... does the new app hate mesh networks as much as thw old one originally did? Maybe an update is coming... that will fix some of this... maybe... but it's a huge step backward. I don't think I'll be buying any more sonos products, but it certainly sucks knowing that something I own - something I bought - can be crippled simply because 'hey we redesigned lol'

I missed this! How do I roll back?

neilmcg
Enthusiast II
May 14, 2024

 

This new app is using new features on the speaker firmware and new cloud services as well.

Please elaborate what these new features and cloud services are.

 

Lyricist II
May 14, 2024

What data did you draw on to justify this new design? Was there any information architecture analysis done? Was there any investigation at all, like user interviews, analytics, usage data, etc?

The marketing materials tout “no more tabs” as a selling point, but for me it’s one of the biggest UX regressions. The new home screen is worse than useless; it’s just a new barrier between me and the favorites screen, which is by far the most common place I’m trying to go in the app besides the now-playing screen.

 

Hello @f8dee28e-f9a0-4157-a141-ce8859 

We did go through multiple phases of assessing the current S2 structure, modified versions of it, and the tabless version that we have today. Our work has engaged existing and new Sonos users throughout, and we have pursued the path that felt the most useful and intuitive to the largest number of users overall. We understand that every user is an individual with unique needs and circumstances. My hope is that your specific needs can be addressed by personalizing your home screen so your Sonos Favorites module shows up front and center on your home screen. Doing so should make this the first thing you see when launching the app. A single tap should take you to the full view of that collection. 

 

Where is this “largest number of users” you mentioned? They’re certainly not in this chat, and they’re not leaving glowing reviews in the App Store either.

Enthusiast I
May 14, 2024

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.


 

 

Customer: “Will Sonos offer an apology to its blind users?”

Sonos: “We took our eye off the ball”

(!) Something went wrong.
Contributor I
May 14, 2024

Will Patrick Spence have the courage to make an open apology to all the SONOS users in regards of the new app release?

Enthusiast I
May 14, 2024

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!

So does this mean I need a paid TuneIn subscription to play a freely available stream URL from the Internet without injected advertisements from TuneIn?

Edit: And how is this better, faster, easier and more what users want than it was in the old app?

Lyricist II
May 14, 2024

Just let us roll back to the previous version until you get this mess figured out

Trending Lyricist II
May 14, 2024

Im hoping for the sleeptimer on the Mainscreen.

add better volume controls for the iPhone. 
widgets?

My First Sonos@2012
Contributor I
May 14, 2024

Repeating my question in case it has been overlooked….how can I play an artists’ top tracks in Deezer (and other streaming services)? It no longer works. If the answer is “you can’t”, please advise if/when this functionality will be reintroduced.

Thank you.

Contributor I
May 14, 2024

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

This new version is New Coke. It’s an idea hatched in an echo chamber without any thought for the vast audience who love Sonos…it does NOT enhance use of Sonos, it severely hinders it. To say Sonos showed “ courage” in releasing this is the height of arrogance. 
 

Admit you’ve made a huge mistake. Allow users to install the old version and withdraw this pretentious beta version until it does genuinely improve the user experience.