The New UI for the Playing Screen Needs Improvement

[weresquid7530]

Device: Sony TV
OS: Android TV

February 18, 2025

There has been an update to the UI for the play screen on Android TV and it is now a less user-friendly experience than before. It has issues with navigation and readability that were not there in the previous versions of the last several years, and I cannot find a good reason for why this has changed for the worse.

1. The active UI element when entering the play screen should be the scrub bar, not the Play button. It hinders the user's ability to rewind tracks, and the main button input on the TV's remote already pauses/plays when the scrub bar is selected. The Play button is redundant and serves first as an indicator and second as an interactive element, so it should not be the default selection. It's very frustrating when a track is playing and I try to rewind, but nothing happens because the active selection is a redundant button with no function for a left input and no UI elements to its left (meaning there is no visual feedback for this input).

2. The scrub bar should not have any buttons to its right or left. Because scrubbing uses left/right inputs, it should not be entered from another UI element using those inputs. Additionally, the user expects to be able to exit that element using the inverse of the input that they used to enter it, which is in direct conflict with the functionality of the element itself once entered. Entering and exiting a 1D continuous interactive UI element should be done perpendicular to the direction of that element.

3. The Play button and enabled toggles such as Lyrics should not be higher contrast than the selection indicator. Aside from the active track's title, these buttons are the highest contrast items on the screen, which visually confuses the user when they are trying to navigate around the screen or identify what UI element is currently selected, since they look like they are what is actively selected at all times. The play button in particular has no reason to be white when the rest of the UI elements are transparent black, as its coloration serves no purpose and does not communicate any information about the active track's play/pause status while still visually overpowering the active selection indicator. These toggles do not need the high contrast to communicate their enabled status, because all three induce very visible changes to the entire screen as part of their functions. I would suggest changing the opacity of enabled toggles only, such that when disabled they are transparent and when enabled they are opaque black. Alternatively, a change in the text and icon color only would reduce their visual weight and solve the issue. The only exception is maybe Dark Mode, as it dims the entire screen and the active selection indicator is easier to see without the splash screen, so the white that is used to indicate the toggles enabled status actually helps with readability, but even then it would be better served by a less visually heavy indicator.

4. The skip and play buttons should be centered and symmetrically laid out on the screen. This would make the UI easier to read, as moving the active selection indicator to either of the skip buttons would shift the visual balance on the screen, assisting in readability at a glance and at a distance.

5. The save button should be below the scrub bar, not above. This one is personal preference, but as a user, when I navigate up from the scrub bar, it is to access the active playlist, home, search, or library buttons at the top of the screen, and the save button is simply in the way. Additionally, given the save button's placement, the active selection indicator (which already takes conscious effort to track due to the high contrast buttons) jumps around from left to right to left on the screen as I navigate upwards, which is like visual whiplash. In film, there is a principle in composition of flow between shots, where the focal point of a shot ought to exist in or near the same place on the screen as the shot that precedes it. This creates for a seamless transition between shots so that the audience remains immersed in the story. The UI layout should employ the same principle by aligning elements that need to be traversed along a single axis or placed in close proximity to each other. The UI should make for a seamless experience, but the way the layout is now calls attention to itself.

An ideal layout for the Play screen would have the scrub bar immediately below the current track information, spanning the entire screen. Below the scrub bar in the center are the skip back, play/pause, and skip forward buttons in that order. Below the scrub bar to the left should be the save button, which would mirror its placement on the Spotify desktop app. Below the scrub bar to the right should be the lyrics, queue, and dark mode toggles, which when enabled go from translucent to opaque black, except dark mode, which can stay white.

I had submitted this feedback yesterday as a request to revert, which got closed. So here is a ticket that lists the specific issues with this new UI and how they should be fixed, according to point 6 on the Idea Exchange Guidelines, and since this has to do with the UI on one specific screen, I do not believe that it violates point 3 on the Guidelines.