20-20-24 hours a day … I wanna be in beta …
I suppose the UX folks finally were allowed to fix the “I own every episode” problem on the new Apple TV. Scrolling through eight or nine seasons of a show to find the newest episode was driving me insane.
I’d scratched together a post about it, then they went and dadgum fixed it. Yay, Apple!
But there are a few other things they can fix.
For example, take advantage of the touch technology on the remote and in the software:
- Long clicks. It’s part of the newer iPhones, and the Apple TV remote.
- Customizable actions.
- Recordable actions.
Put them all together and you can fix something that annoys me … play movies without six zillion clicks.
- Click to select movies. Fine.
- Drag to move over to Purchased movies. Fine.
- Click to get to the point to look at the movies you own. FINE.
- Drag and click to select a movie to watch. Fine.
- Get shown the splash screen of the movie. Play is highlighted.
- Click Play.
- THE MOVIE DOESN’T PLAY. You usually get taken to an ‘extras” interactive screen where you can click Play, or start thumbing through extras.
- Click Play.
- Half the time we are asked if we want to pick up the movie where we left off instead of actually playing the movie. Another Click.
Things are no longer fine.
How about this?
- Click to select movies.
- Drag to get over to Purchased movies.
- Click to get to the point you look at movies you own.
- Drag and long-click to select the move you want to watch and start playing it from the beginning.
Four steps instead of seven to nine. If I want to watch extras, I could double-click to get to the “extras” interactive screen. Or to play the movie where we left off. Or whatever else I customize and record. Or triple click to switch back to the Apple TV homescreen.
It would make this user happy. And it would make the process designer in me ecstatic. All those Apple TVs out there, and one in what, fifty super user geeks like me making their own design decisions? I can imagine getting my hands on that kind of data: How the super user geek uses the Apple TV to improve the design for all users.
Come on, Apple. Give us some code!