Retired Sonos Staff

Interview

Sonos App Redesign AMA

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
May 14, 2024
770 replies
65992 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

aa170492

Lyricist I

Two hours in and here we are (numbers in brackets are the count at 1 hour)

@DianeRobertsApps - 4 (0)

@KateW - 5 (3)

@tuckerseverson - 3 (2)

One has to wonder if they have to run every response past corporate laywers given the amount of time it seems to take them.

And some stats of my own counting:

Respect shown to customers - 0

Horrific discoveries - 2

Data corruption issue in alarms didn’t stop a release.
All speakers now available on the public internet protected only by a users password.

Feedback/suggestions actually taken by Sonos - 0

Destruction to the company’s goodwill: Priceless.

E

Erland Sommarskog

Enthusiast 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.

I can imagine that a rollback can cause issue. But so did your roll forward for lots of people. I think the worst by far is the lack of accessibility. (It does not concern me personally, but it just seems unacceptable to me.)

You could make the old app available in parallel for a while. Timebomb it, so that people don’t use it forever.

Personally, I like the style of the new app. But it is not ready for prime time. It should have been released as a public preview.

T

TigersJ

Lyricist III

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?

@GuitarSuperstar

Thanks for asking. We have all been deeply invested in this project for a long time. We are all Sonos owners. Many people on the team had Sonos in their homes before they joined the team. We all use the experience every day.

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.

“faster time to music”? That has not been my experience. As a simple example, selecting a Recently Played Spotify Station or a Sonos Favorite from the Home screen requires another window to open and pressing play. That’s one too many clicks.

CronoCX

Enthusiast II

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

SMB v1 is gone. I can confirm SMB v2 works just fine. Keep in mind though, once you approach 65,000 tracks it can get dicey.

Same. Been running SMB 3 for almost a year. My NAS is a Synology.

Interestingly, my NAS has been set for SMB v3 exclusively (server and client) and Sonos wouldn’t connect from the Windows controller. Bumped the NAS back to SMB v2 and Sonos immediately connected. This was for a new connection.

I use(d) Navidrome and Bonob for Subsonic connection to Sonos and that’s broken as of this update.

I’m running macOS, but that’s interesting. I just checked my SMB access today and it was running 3.1.1.

webmink

Prominent Collaborator I

I’ve only observed up till now. There are only three respondents to, what — 400 users here ? While the Sonos replies are too few and too infrequent, they each generate further exponential posts, many just to get in a snarky response. This was never going to work. There have been plenty of pertinent questions posed, but also far too much mud-slinging which was never going to add anything. Maybe next time, a different platform for the Q&A, and hopefully a few more adults in the room.

I feel like majority of the thread has been valid concerns and complaints, with minimal responses. It doesn’t help when the answers warrant further questions. Sonos didn’t read the room.

Also helps no one that you have to sift through every page and comment just to see where responses lie. This was poorly thought out.

You can find the replies by looking at the user profile for each of the execs:

https://en.community.sonos.com/members/dianeroberts-8186284

https://en.community.sonos.com/members/tuckerseverson-8185496

https://en.community.sonos.com/members/katew-8185485

Support musicians by buying music instead of streaming.

D

domotech

Lyricist III

YOU WILL OWN NOTHING AND BE HAPPY...

U

UnkPaul

Contributor I

In case no-one has noticed yet, local Music Libraries are now BROKEN with the 80.00.08 release. They disappeared from the IOS apps and an update to the Mac Desktop app errors out when trying to add them. (Error 913)

Standing ovation.

T

Tbq22

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.

Well, gee, you make it sound so heroic.

BUT WHY DIDN’T YOU JUST WAIT TO RELEASE IT, IN THAT CASE?!!!

This whole ordeal has been so frustrating, and your happy corporate speak is simply adding insult to your injured customers.

Please, for the love of god, just tell us why it was so important to release this app that you decided it was worth doing so without critical functionality your customers rely on? It makes zero sense! Was it board/management pressue? Was there some underlying security issue that still made the misery worth it?

As a customer, your behavior is inexplicable. Please treat us with respect and tell us WHY you decided pissing us all off was worth it. Nothing Sonos has said to date makes any sense.

T

TigersJ

Lyricist III

Any update on if there will ever be lock screen, widget or live activity bar control for iOS users? The need to open the app to change songs or individual speaker volume is just absolutely bananas. I understand you can start in Spotify and get some of those functionalities, but come on, that should be a bare minimum feature of the system.

B

Brucead

Contributor I

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!

Hello and welcome everyone,

Before getting started I’d like to thank you all for RSVPing and attending. This is the first of many events going forward where members of our Community can talk directly to members of the Sonos team and learn about the development and design behind our products. Keep in mind that@Mike R. H. and myself will be heavily monitoring this topic to ensure we keep this train on its tracks. Please keep the conversation respectful and constructive.

It’s not lost on me (or the team) that this most recent Sonos app update has caused a torrent of feedback topics here on the Community and across the web. We want to make sure you get the most out of the next three hours, so we’ve decided to focus our efforts on the questions with the most likes. Please use likes to “upvote” the question you want answered. By combining similar topics and questions, we will be able to cover more and hopefully cover the wide breadth of conversation you are looking for.

Note: Be sure to check out our most recent update to the Future Feature Update post where we will continue to update you on the road going forward.

Thank you and see you around the Community!
Keith

This quote is the best example I can think of, showing the arrogance behind this new version. Tucker, this is Not Us against Them!…. Were your users, were the people who built up an amazingly loyal Sonos Community, and the arrogance your team showed in the manner in which this whole sad chapter of the conp@ny’s history is staggering.

It’s not courage to release a poorly designed app that reflects appalling assumptions about what your user base wants. It’s not courageous to spend all that money on promoting this new version when you spent zero in showing users why it was so good, and HOW it is supposedly better. It is not. This is New Coke.

Show some real courage and allow users to roll back to the old version. That will show you just how badly your team misjudged this new version. It is New Coke. Admit you got it wrong. Show some humility.

It’s funny. This intro typifies the problem Sonos is facing. While you’re worried about the roadmap, your disenchanted Sonos community are looking for an Escape Route. The puffery behind the promotion of this new version is staggering and very unSonos. How about you spend a little of the money you wasted on tempting people to upgrade, on a serious, detailed User Guide…because this new version is NOT, in any way intuitive. It breaks every UI rule. I’ve been a dedicated Sonos user from almost the beninning, This a massive mistake. An app designed in an echo chamber, just like New Coke.

Forget the tin ear shown by leading with this quote. Give everyone a chance to vote with their feet ( hands) and allow us to reinstall the old version. Then you’ll really understand the backlash you’re getting.

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