Broken UX (for me) & Feature request: Add current playing station to library

[bentolor]

Thank for this nice piece of software.

I upgraded from older Gradio release to 7.1 lately and struggled with quite a few major UX issues: One being flatpak/flatpak#2014 now – after being able to run gradio manually via flatpak run de.haeckerfelix.gradio/x86_64/stable I'm now struggling to add the current playing station to the library in the new UI amongst quite a bunch of other UX issues I have.

Current Behavior

1. Start some search
2. Try out a new station, let it run 1-2h
3. Decide to keep the station – struggling to find a "add to library button" nowhere.
   3.1. Nervously left/right click on the play subbar
   3.2 click the check mark in the title list
   3.3 click the hamburger menu
   3.4 start clicking allover the ui to detect active UI elements anywhere
4. Finally do a fresh search with the station name
   4.1. left clicking station stops it. Press play again
   4.2. right clicking selects it, finally got it : search, right click station, left click add library.

Expected Behavior

… find the "love it" and "add it" buttons right in the subbar

Overall feedback

I understand the UI design minimalism/simplicity Gradio is aiming for, but (probably it's me) I'm really failing hard to use Gradio effectively now. Please do not understand as unfiltered criticism but an unfiltered list how I experience Gradio right now in the moment after finally being able to resurrect it on my upgraded bionic installation after a few weeks (I uninstalled it by accident not realizing that it no longer is offered via PPA)

Just a short list off issues I'm having:

• I do not understand why "discover" appears after I typed a search term.
• I do not understand how a can filter for "house radios in german tagged with deep"
• I do not understand how I can explore the available list of tags, countries, ...
• I do not understand when/why multiselection is necessary. Typically I'll always work an single stations. Actually I do not remember anytime the need to batch transform/manipulate something in Gradio.
• I find it very hard to understand, that after right-clicking a station I need to select abort in the title bar to resume my usage
• It's true: I have different approaches to browse / explore a station list (i.e. from asearch)
  • One would be just quickly jumping/switching station. This is currently achieved by left-clicking
  • The other would be to browse the details of each station without interrupting my current play.
  • Unfortunately this is the UX I fell into:
    * But DO NOT right click. In that moment the UI jumps and you must carefully realized that you have to press "Abort" before continuing
    * Ah … you right-clicked because wanted to know details about the station. Okay – press abort again …
    • double-click the current playing station to discover the detail pane? Nope
    • Right-cli.,... Goddammit! Abort
    • Click the check-mark upper right … you are kidding. No? Abort
    • Press "<" – Now I see my (empty) library. Hmmm.
    • Double-click that. Nope.
    • Right-click again... Ahhh … Okay. "Details"
    • Right-click again. What the heck is "collection".
    • How do I get back to my list? Sure … Abort
    • Search button. Okay – I need to retype my search. Why?

Hopefully my diary can give a few clues about what a typical user might struggle. I think the major point for me is

• The (overemphasized) multiselection behavior which – in contrast to all other UX activies – requires a total different usage pattern for the user
• The fact, that the "search" and the "library" are no longer side by side, but a sub-dialog of the library.
• Even more, that the transition _library > search is total different from search > Discover. But honestly I still don't get that feature at all.

Potentially alternative UX flows

Station handling

• right-clicking a station reveals the detail pane at the right side. In the search list it will select the right-clicked entry without switching current playing station
• this offers all the actions as buttons in the lower part of the pane: Love, add to library, ...

Searching

• keep terms/search on reentering search window
• offer a "tag"- field/label. i.e. with autocompletion or clicking revealing a tag cloud dialog (ordered by popularity).
• same for country. (ordered alphabetically)
• offer [x] for each of the three search properties to reset them. Potentially offer an overall [x]

Sorry for my long UX complaints. Hope you can see the constructive part of it.

[bentolor]

I just discovered the possibilities to filter by tag, language, country & county via the down-arrow, though I yet do not understand how to pick values other than guessing & typing.

[haecker-felix]

Thank you for your very detailed "bug report" :). I have to admit, the current UI is not perfect. I can agree on many of your points.

Currently I'm completely reworking the UI of Gradio:

Instead of only showing the huge station cover, you have now a detailed row. A click on the row expands it. All details are already visible, you don't need a extra sidebar for it anymore.

To the issue itself: Yes it make sense, to add a button to the playerbar to add the current playing station to the library.

[bentolor]

Thanks for your preview! I think the expandable detail rows are definitely a big improvement. Wonder what the best tradeoff between the clickable area for "play station" and "expand details" is in practice.