Skip to main content
Mike H
Retired Sonos Staff
May 14, 2024
Interview

Sonos App Redesign AMA

  • May 14, 2024
  • 770 replies
  • 65993 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.
​​

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.

770 replies

Lyricist III
May 14, 2024

You’ve made our speakers open to the internet via the new web app without our consent and without two-factor authentication for security.
You’ve demoted local library music so much that it’s practically impossible to find our music (no search, poor A-Z scrolling) plus there is no way to update the index of the library.

 

Is this legitimate? Can you provide more info on how this is happening? Highly concerning.

Go to play.sonos.com, log in. See your speakers. Do it from outside your network, still see your speakers. 
There is no tfa or mfa options, only password. This is not good security practice. 

I just tried this, and my speakers really are accessible from outside my network. That's it Sonos I’m done!!!!!

What are you doing? 

 

Mod Edit: removed the profanity

Trending Lyricist I
May 14, 2024

I know others have mentioned it but would love to know more about the web app and having the ability to disable it. What security precautions are taken, etc. 

Enthusiast II
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?

Thank you @veryblocky @YorkSteve @umiami91. Since you all had similar questions, I’d like to answer them together.

An app is never finished! 

It’s probably a good idea to give you some background. This is a new app - we started from an empty project file. As the project progressed, we stopped investing our time in the old app code. Over time we “cross-faded” our engineering attention into the new app. We need to make the new app be the app going forward so we stop splitting our attention.

We decided that now is the moment to bring you the new app. This is the beginning, and we will be continually iterating going forward. As I said - an app is never finished.

Absolutely unprofessional - to say the least.

 

Lyricist III
May 14, 2024

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.

ap launch should have been delayed is there was data corruption in it. There is no reason or excuse that you can give as to why this app was launched in this condition. Has anybody at sonos every heard of an apology?? you really need to look up the meaning of the word and then give one

Lyricist III
May 14, 2024

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? 

No Derrick it is not a joke. 

Wow SSL you are an easy one to please.  

Pretty much and the things that I am wanting I voice my option and patiently wait for them. 

 

Example when Sonos screwed up True play. Voiced my option and eventually they fixed it. 

Enthusiast II
May 14, 2024

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? 

@mdpeterman

A key part of this new app was using the newer Sonos APIs, which means we did indeed rewrite the volume experience entirely.  Until this new update, our app was using an older set of technology based on UPnP and SOAP.

Thank you for sharing the videos. I will make sure the team sees these so that we can continue to iterate and improve in upcoming releases.

@DianeRobertsApps @tuckerseverson @KateW Regardless of newer technology, did you at any point compare the experience of the new app to the old and say I’m happy this ready for production?
Because users don’t care if it uses SOAP or RESTful APIs, they just want to be able to use their products without troubleshooting issues and a good app is the interface that makes that happen.

Currently this new app is far from being a seamless user experience!

Bring back the old Sonos app. It was clunky, but it actually worked!
Lyricist III
May 14, 2024

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

I agree with this. 

Contributor I
May 14, 2024

Even though everybody is clamoring for a rollback I’m sure it won’t happen.  So, scale up and fix this—quickly.  That’s the only apology we really want.  Fix your mess and do it rapidly.  You’ve got plenty of data on what those current issues are, too.  In the meantime the people that built your company feel completely bamboozled and will continue to be in an uproar.  

Lyricist II
May 14, 2024

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.

@KateW Understood. @tuckerseverson  Given the fact that this new app is just that a, new app not just a UI redesign; What was the thinking of not sunsetting S2 and introducing the  new app as S3 in beta? It could have very well given your user-base the information to plan migrations or to understand when would be the right time to switch app architectures. 

With large changes like this, clarity is key. As a user, I went to bed with an app I could use with a layout I could manage, and woke up to my alarms blaring and a completely new app.

Renowned Enthusiast II
May 14, 2024

As someone who was about spend a not inconsiderable amount of money to replace my NAS please can Sonos please provide some clarity on future functionality in the near future.
 

Specifically is SMB v1 gone (confused as my very old NAS seems to be working still)? Are the SMB v2 bugs I heard people using SMB v1 to avoid fixed? Will search and navigation in the app be fixed to make using a NAS and local library worthwhile again? 
 

Thanks