Boom Not A Good Choice for Grandma

[upstatemike]

I purchased a Boom in the hopes that the presets and other hard buttons on the face would help simplify things enough so Grandma could have access to some playlists and radio stations without constantly having to ask for help.

Unfortunately the Boom UI is not very intuitive and in some ways is actually harder to use then a regular Squeezebox. Some of the issues that completey confused Grandma (and in most cases me) were:

Not easy to predict what the knob is going to do at any given point in time... volume? menus? No visual indication of current context.

Volume level indicator sometimes won't move when adjusting the volume. The sound level changes but the display does not. Grandma needs the visual cue to help her know how much she is adjusting the volume.

I set up some playlists for her and used the presets for radio stations. She was able to play a playlist fine. Then she pressed a preset and got her radio station fine. Then she hit pause to tell me something and when she hit play to resume she got the playist again, Not the radio station. This was so counterintuitive that it confused us both and everything just went downhill from there.

We finally gave up and I put the Boom away in a closet until the day when newer firmware or a wiki on how to configure the top menu to behave better becomes available.

I like the Boom hardware fine but the UI just doesn't make sense to me and is particularly baffling for an elderly person who is not tech-savvy. There really needs to be a way to create a simplified top menu with consistent behavior that makes sense to guests and casual users.

[Mark Miksis]

I purchased a Boom in the hopes that the presets and other hard buttons on the face would help simplify things enough so Grandma could have access to some playlists and radio stations without constantly having to ask for help.

Unfortunately the Boom UI is not very intuitive and in some ways is actually harder to use then a regular Squeezebox. Some of the issues that completey confused Grandma (and in most cases me) were:

Not easy to predict what the knob is going to do at any given point in time... volume? menus? No visual indication of current context.

I was one of the many beta testers who wanted the knob to do volume. In hindsight, I agree that it would be easier for new users if the default behavior was "knob never does volume" and advanced users have to change a pref to get the current hybrid behavior. There was also some discussion during beta about a visual mode indicator but it was never implemented.

Volume level indicator sometimes won't move when adjusting the volume. The sound level changes but the display does not. Grandma needs the visual cue to help her know how much she is adjusting the volume.

I've never seen this. If it can be reliably reproduced, please file a bug.

I set up some playlists for her and used the presets for radio stations. She was able to play a playlist fine. Then she pressed a preset and got her radio station fine. Then she hit pause to tell me something and when she hit play to resume she got the playist again, Not the radio station. This was so counterintuitive that it confused us both and everything just went downhill from there.

It should work exactly as you and grandma expected. I'm not sure if you found a bug or she did something wrong...

We finally gave up and I put the Boom away in a closet until the day when newer firmware or a wiki on how to configure the top menu to behave better becomes available.

I like the Boom hardware fine but the UI just doesn't make sense to me and is particularly baffling for an elderly person who is not tech-savvy. There really needs to be a way to create a simplified top menu with consistent behavior that makes sense to guests and casual users.

I've always thought that it would be useful to have "basic" and "advanced" menu options, but I'm not sure what the "basic" menu would look like. What would you suggest?

[upstatemike]

I've always thought that it would be useful to have "basic" and "advanced" menu options, but I'm not sure what the "basic" menu would look like. What would you suggest?

To me an ideal top menu for Grandma, or guests, would be the equivalent of a Favorites list at the top level. No sub-menus at all and no Now Playing at the top level.

Example:

Turn the player on and you have a list of Playlists, Songs, and Radio Stations. Go through the list and select one and it starts playing. Display then switches to display "Now Playing" information but the location in the top menu never moves so operating the up/down (or knob) controls puts you right back to the same point in the list where you were with absolutely no way to get the context shifted elsewhere.

You could have the option to put regular sub-menus such as "Artists" or "Albums" in if you want to but there should not be a requirement for any sub-menus at all. Regardless of whether there are sub-menus or not it is important for navigation to stay locked at the last point selected in the menu and never dynamically shift to a "Now Playing" or other reference point.

A good analogy is changing channels on a TV. Whatever channel you are watching (or watched last)is exactly where you will start from when selecting a new channel. This is something Grandma can easily understand.

[ModelCitizen]

If this bug/enhancement is implemented you could tailor the top-level menu just as you describe:

http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=9358

If you think it'll help you get the Boom out of the closet please vote for it.

I too was instrumental in requesting that the knob do volume... but also agree that the current implementation is not ideal... however, I find the fact that it does volume when the screensaver is on very useful indeed and could not imagine a large knob in the centre of an audio device such as the Boom that was incapable of doing volume.

MC

[ModelCitizen]

And.... the Now Playing screen and screensaver is the real glaring weakness at the centre of the whole SlimCenter player ui.

Feel free to add comments here:

http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=9164

MC

[JJZolx]

Not easy to predict what the knob is going to do at any given point in time... volume? menus? No visual indication of current context.

There was a lot of debate on how to do this during the beta phase, and what resulted was a kind of compromise. I've found that most of the time the approach works well, but you're right - it's not always predictable.

An option for the default knob behavior was the most often requested solution, but was rejected. I agree with Fletch - a knob behavior option, and a simplified default behavior would be preferable to the current approach.

[dwilliams01]

Turn the player on and you have a list of Playlists, Songs, and Radio Stations. Go through the list and select one and it starts playing. Display then switches to display "Now Playing" information but the location in the top menu never moves so operating the up/down (or knob) controls puts you right back to the same point in the list where you were with absolutely no way to get the context shifted elsewhere.

You could have the option to put regular sub-menus such as "Artists" or "Albums" in if you want to but there should not be a requirement for any sub-menus at all. Regardless of whether there are sub-menus or not it is important for navigation to stay locked at the last point selected in the menu and never dynamically shift to a "Now Playing" or other reference point.

A good analogy is changing channels on a TV. Whatever channel you are watching (or watched last)is exactly where you will start from when selecting a new channel. This is something Grandma can easily understand.

If your player screen saver is set to (in 7.3) "Now Playing" then it does remember where you were and if you use the remote arrow keys then it will be exactly where you were. In 7.2 I think that it was called something else (I seem to remember "Now playing with jump back" or something like that. In 7.3 there is an option to "Jump to now playing" which I take to mean go there and stay there. Very tricky to find - took me 5 minutes to find these again - I kept looking for a specific setting instead of a screensaver choice.

I think that you can eliminate most, if not all, of the confusing menu items from the boom. In the web UI go to settings, player, and start knocking them off.

I'd also suggest just using the remote and not touching the knob. As it is, this is much more straightforward. I never use the knob because it usually is in volume mode for this reason.

[upstatemike]

If your player screen saver is set to (in 7.3) "Now Playing" then it does remember where you were and if you use the remote arrow keys then it will be exactly where you were. In 7.2 I think that it was called something else (I seem to remember "Now playing with jump back" or something like that. In 7.3 there is an option to "Jump to now playing" which I take to mean go there and stay there. Very tricky to find - took me 5 minutes to find these again - I kept looking for a specific setting instead of a screensaver choice.

I think that you can eliminate most, if not all, of the confusing menu items from the boom. In the web UI go to settings, player, and start knocking them off.

I'd also suggest just using the remote and not touching the knob. As it is, this is much more straightforward. I never use the knob because it usually is in volume mode for this reason.

I have seen the "Jump Back" option but I cannot find detailed documentation on how it is supposed to behave. (Is it jumping back FROM Now Playing to where you were when you last hit play? Is it jumping back TO Now Playing from wherever you are?)In the absence of documentation I will have to work out for myself what it really does but that is down the list after I figure out how to get Static IPs into my Controller and Receiver (another UI issue).

I did eliminate all menus except Favorites but this does not work smoothly. After the screensaver times out you can't just flip up and down the list to pick something else but instead have to hit the left button then the right button to make the list live again. No way I can explain the reasoning for this to an elderly person. Maybe I am doing something wrong so if anybody can point me to the documentation that explains this I would appreciate it.

I think much of the confusion around the knob would be resolved if there was something on the display to indicate the current mode of the knob. It also seems like it should not be this hard... if you are listening to music it should do volume. If you want to go through the menus pressing the knob in should put it into menu mode until you select something at which point it immediately goes back to being a volume knob. Most menus should probably have a cancel or escape selection so you can go back to listening without selecting anything new. Maybe setting the Now playing screensaver to 0 would make make things more predictable?

If I avoid the knob and use the remote only then I have defeated the purpose of getting Grandma the Boom in the first place (the easy buttons on the face.) Might as well just try to customize an SB3 for her and ditch the Boom at that point.

[JJZolx]

Maybe setting the Now playing screensaver to 0 would make make things more predictable?

Setting it lower helps, but setting it too low makes navigating during playback impossible. It would be especially difficult for an older user or anyone that pauses while navigating.

[upstatemike]

And.... the Now Playing screen and screensaver is the real glaring weakness at the centre of the whole SlimCenter player ui.

Feel free to add comments here:

http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=9164

MC

I don't think I can comment there because I don't really understand the issues or why there is a Now Playing screensaver vs. a Now playing menu screen. Why isn't there a single Now Playing instance regardless of whether it is accessed via screensaver, menu selection, or button? If I can't understand it I certainly can't explain it to Grandma!