About mobile music players
Currently, mobile users have an opportunity to listen to a large amount of music. Many of them, however, still pose a question about what to play.
In order to explore this abundance, services started suggesting us music, i.e. ready-made playlists or collections matching certain mood or activity. This became a reason for a changed scenario of music player usage.
We used to have our own music collections and would choose songs that were of current interest at that moment. Now we mostly listen to recommendations by simply just selecting a context (morning, running, chill etc.). Oftentimes we don’t like the suggestion and press forward button to hear the next track. Music player use is now all about picking suggested music and skipping the tracks that do not match our taste preferences.
It is fair to assume that a player’s interface with Play/Pause button located in the middle of the control panel is now out-of-date, and Forward button should be present on the screen instead.
Playlist selection problem can be shifted onto the device. Thanks to the smartphone’s sensors, music players can understand a lot about the user in general and at a particular moment in time. Music app can access information from other apps. All of this helps the player identify the context of the device usage. A good example of this is Google Now with its ability to present up-to-date information depending on the context.
Smartphone know where we are, how and where we get around, which date of the week it is, which season and what weather.
During a morning run app suggests us a Running Playlist, on the way to the office — something energizing before a working day. In addition, the app can transfer user’s location information to the online service and web-application will select a right playlist for a breakfast at home or evening relaxing time.
In such case, we only skip the tracks mismatching our taste and add the rest to our Favorite Tracks.
Listening to music is a background process during which we don’t to see to the app itself.
To change to a next track existing interfaces make us look at them. It is not quite comfortable often and moreover we are usually busy at that moment with our chief business. What if interfaces could give us an opportunity to skip the track without looking at the phone and even touching it?
For this, we could use those same sensors which become more precise, functional and less energy-dependent with every new phone model. We also find help in additional devices such as a headset, wearable gadgets, steering wheel music control and so on. All of this allows us using alternative methods of music control and focusing on our main occupation without being disturbed.
For example, to play the next track while in public transportation, we can tap the phone without taking it out the pocket, or rotate the wrist if we use a smart-watch; we could also use proximity sensor and move the hand over the phone laying on the table.
We can create an “invisible” interface of a music player and launching the app will just do it.
Originally published at dzyuzin.com on December 2015
