I like the tiles!
redchiz
Member, Super User Posts: 5,437 ✭✭✭
OK, inspired by a few other posts and topics swimming against the generally negative tide I have decided to stick my head above the parapet and declare: I like the tiles!
Yes, there are issues with MyTV which have been well documented elsewhere. But these should not detract from the basic look and premise across NextGen which is an improvement in my opinion.
Any other supporters would be more than welcome to post (please)!
And any critics feel free, but reasoned argument would be much appreciated rather than some of the fractious "which idiot thought this up?" we have already seen elsewhere, no need to repeat it if you have already said it.
Here's hoping.
Yes, there are issues with MyTV which have been well documented elsewhere. But these should not detract from the basic look and premise across NextGen which is an improvement in my opinion.
Any other supporters would be more than welcome to post (please)!
And any critics feel free, but reasoned argument would be much appreciated rather than some of the fractious "which idiot thought this up?" we have already seen elsewhere, no need to repeat it if you have already said it.
Here's hoping.
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Comments
Why can't you stop the recording of an episode when it has ended and delete it without it having to close the series record and you having to go back in and scroll back to the watched episode and then delete it. Talk about doing things in a roundabout way, there has not been the attention to detail that should have taken place when they decided to update the system..
I would then say 'I like tiles' and 'I like lists' as concepts.
If one looks back to the early days of YouView there was negative feedback about the list implementation as well as suggestions of tweaks that some felt would make it better. A key negative piece of feedback at launch and in trials in 2012 was that the list view was not a continuous list one scrolled down but was a paged list (that one also scrolled sideways through rather than down off the page). It felt a little uncomfortable/unusual compared to some people's experience of other PVRs but it is something no one mentions these days and people actually now say being able to click left or right to jump through the pages or all the way to the last page is a positive. Equally others requests around the lists was to add more information/extra columns to the list, e.g. duration. I would tend to say the latter could still be useful whereas the former of a continuous scrolling list is a minor footnote in the history or YouView and the acceptance of change. Originally the list view had no folders/series roll ups but it was soon implemented and much the better for it. People also though asked for arbitrary/self-defined folders and those never came. Some would still think they would be useful but arguably they are not a game changer feature for most people. Overall over time I would say the lists were generally seen as a suitably functional implementation of a method for efficiently accessing and managing recordings.
Taking the lists as the minimum standard for the underlying logic of an efficient usable recordings access and management system I was thus very surprised with the poor journeys in and out of the new tile based MyTV. To me the concept of tiles was a perfectly reasonable idea and if implemented, tested and tweaked accordingly would be seen as a good solution by most. All the usability issues with MyTV are easy to spot and were it my choice I would not have released without first addressing (most of) them. To have released with such issues has placed an unnecessary burden and misdirection on whether (the) tiles are good or bad. No doubt there were even worse bugs and issues with MyTV before the public release so perhaps we should all be thankful it did not release even earlier
The top priority (and I believe it is YouView's top priority now once the roll out is complete) is fixing the journeys in and out of MyTV and series tiles. I might argue one could push out within 2-4 weeks some simple fixes or workarounds but given we are now 4 months into what seems to be a 7 month roll out with no significant change I accept that they are taking a more considered view now and we are unlike to see any change in this area for at least another 4 months.
For the above I would expect them to:
- ensure when you exit a recording you are returned directly to the tile for that recording and not just for the series
- as a minimum offer a wrap around feature to navigate the tiles within a series, i.e. if they do nothing else they should allow you to click right and thus move from the newest tile to the oldest
- ideally though they implement a more intelligent point of entry into a series rollup such that you land on the next unwatched tile in the series
- deliver the action panel feature that is confirmed to return (not so much a journey in or out of the tiles but something that does offer options to access other content from a tile amongst other things)
Once they have that right I would expect them to turn to the issue of whether the information on the tiles should or can be improved, e.g.- how do they address the feedback that on all but the quadruple sized tile programme titles are often truncated. They might explore a simple pattern match and replace to drop 'New: ' from titles where it exists and hence save 5 characters. They might explore allowing 2 lines of text for the titles on each tile given it is arguably the most important fact.
- they might further explore different grid layouts, e.g. the large tile is easier to use but too big to really be the default size, perhaps though they could look at layouts that are 3 tiles wide and might thus contain only 9 tiles per page (if the screen real estate is used better to still get in 3 rows). That has the downside of less tiles per page but the upside of more screen real estate per tile to more adequately overlay useful text based information. It would also potentially drop the concept of one tile being bigger than the others which some like but others see as pointless and unhelpful in terms of a regular grid and journey through it.
- if they have larger tiles or just use the space on them more effectively they might show more information such as the number of items in the series or duration of the programmes directly rather than the current setup of some information scrolling into view only when you are on the tile.
- they might further offer a simple option to turn off the images on tiles for those that find the image distracting
Having addressed the above I would say they would be ready for wider public use (if of course it were not already released and rolled out to probably 1m users by now).Whilst doing all the above I would be keeping in mind that however good I make tiles it may not be the best solution for all. I would thus be considering how to code/implement the above flexibly such that I might reuse the majority of the code for a different layout/view. Whilst other off-the-shelf mainstream solutions only seem to offer one layout, the flexibility of a well implemented HTML5 based solution should mean one can offer a complimentary/alternative view that is some form of list, be that a pure text list or be that one with a thumbnail per line to make it feel more glossy, modern and related to the overall next gen image led experience.
We are told YouView boxes provide (anonymised) data back to YouView Towers so I would then wonder could I then monitor such options and usage if implemented. I would expect the implementation of a list view to be a reasonable option and one I can then talk up along with the other accessibility and choice features of YouVIew. I would then see how the data from boxes backed up real usage. If over time I find the alternative view is disproportionately time consuming or difficult to maintain for the user base that use it (based on the data from the 2.5m boxes that are telling me how the users use then) then I would make the case to deprecate the feature and give good notice it will be dropped at some point in the future.
All in all I do not think it is difficult to improve the tiles based experience which is in part why it is so disappointing it was not finished properly before public release and hence avoiding much of the negative feedback it has attracted.
At the risk of making my post even longer, in short I thus like tiles and lists, I was perfectly happy with the lists on the old gen software and expect to be perfectly happy with the tiles in next gen once they are properly finished. I would though like to see some sort of alternate list like view/tile layout for choice and accessibility even though I would most likely personally use a grid of tiles view (assuming both views are equally well implemented).
If they can get all that done and bring back channel hiding (which is confirmed as making a return, and to have released with it absent has been a source of negative feedback for the EPG that could equally have been avoided) then we should be well on our way again
At the risk of going even further off topic, as for the branding issues that just seems like wanting to shoot ones self in the foot either for the simplicity of coding or the marginal gains for the ISP of getting their branding in front of a few more people (only about 10% of the user base will be pure retail and those that had an ISP box and are out of subscription should already understand what the ISPs offerings are). YouView do at times though seem to like making things more uncomfortable for themselves than it really needs to be ;-)
It seems even now I cannot keep my answer as short as it might be ;-)
So I'll just stick with "Yeah, what he said."