-- on the while playing screen (from now on referred to as WPS) the screen with the Tilte/Artist/Album you press the red joystick button. if you then hold it down on the now & next screen you get the song info. But, if you scroll with the wheel to another song, and then hold down the red button, it SHOULD show that song info, it should not jump back to the song playing's info.

-- pressing the wheel durng a song makes MUCH more sense to reorder tracks or add songs to a playlist.. why does this do nothing. Pressing the red button leads to skipped songs and paused music (this one is a no brainer!)

-- why does the wheel not do volume? everyone I have showed the Karma to (4 people) tries to turn up the volume witht the wheel. It should work like this. Instead they ff/rw the song

--equalizer menu makes no sense. Some of the option just change the setting immediately, while others have submenus.

--so many times the skick behavior is similar to the wheel (press up/down on the stick or use the wheel in menus) but other times they do COMPLETLEY different things. (see WPS)

-- orgainze submenu is a waste of time. Why not instead just use the song browser "Play Music" menu to browse to stuff you want to delete? And instead of "Play Music" change it to "Browse"

--why oh why do the menus only take up 1/2 the screen? and get RID of the bubbles around every word.

--here is an example of BAD interface. why is setting IP address and clock SO difficult? You could just have the time in the middle of the screen and you scroll the wheel to set the time. the quicker the wheel spins (I am sure there must be some sort of alleleration code) just sets the time. Spin slower to fine adjust.

-- I NEVER WANT TO SEE AN HOUR GLASS. My Sony T68i showed "Please Wait" all the time, and I chucked that sh*t into the trash. Why when I enter the bookmark menu do I see an hourglass? I never see an hourglass on my empeg or Archos or ipod. You would think with a database driven file system or whatever everything would be instantaneous.

That's all for now. I will have more later. Who did the UI design here? Nothing works smoothly.

While i didn't get to spend more than 10 minutes with a pre-production Karma a while back.. i completely have to agree with you on the inteface. It is very inconsistent and non intuitive. Hell, the Riot's interface was better, and it still bugs the hell out of me everytime i use it. I really wish i had one in front of me so i could outline everything that didn't make sense about it... but the biggest i remember from memory are the way you have to select things and the inconsistency of the wheel function that you mentioned. I don't recall exactly how it worked, but something about the way that things were highlited then had to be selected drove me nuts.

If I recall correctly, Loren, when you played with the preproduction Karma it was before certain things on the UI had been worked on.

Almost all of the stuff you do in the menus now can be done equally with the wheel and the stick. At the time you used it, it was probably still in the stage where you had to use either the wheel or the stick in many places. Now you can use both almost everywhere.

The only places where you can't use both are where they are deliberately going for multiple functionality, where the two inputs do deliberately different things. For instance, having the wheel do FF/REW while the stick does play and stop.

Personally, I don't have a problem with the interface now. I might just be used to it. But I have to say that it didn't take long to get used to, and it works very well. It's certainly a lot nicer and simpler than many other interfaces I've used.

Yeah, i wish i had one to play with now to see the differences. I guess i will have the chance next week. =] I played with Mike's when he had his visit a short while back.

another thing that bothers me. Change the bold font. Why do the letters overlap each other? Just look at the word "Main Menu" It just looks very unprofessional.

We shoulda had you on the beta test team.

Me too! heheh. I have a reputation at this company as the guy that breaks rigs. Most of the TD's hate me, only one actually loves that i go through the effort to test everything early on and not find something when it's too late to fix. Good thing that TD is the lead on the game i'm on now.

The only places where you can't use both are where they are deliberately going for multiple functionality, where the two inputs do deliberately different things. For instance, having the wheel do FF/REW while the stick does play and stop.

Just for your information. The stick also does ff/rw when the wheel does ff/rw. I guess they couldn't think of anything better for the few buttons on the player...

> why does the wheel not do volume?

Really? That is very odd. How do you change the volume with it then?

The dedicated volume buttons on the side...

Oh ok, that's fine then.

For the record... I think the reason the wheel doesn't do volume is probably because it's easy to accidentally move the wheel when it's in your pocket.

There is a "lock" feature for that, but if you forget to put on the lock, accidentally fast-forwarding the song while listening with earphones isn't nearly as dangerous as accidentally maxing the volume...

I had a few ideas for the Karma as well (some of which are just reiterating ideas of elinenbe)

1. Get rid of the delays, or at least remove the hourglass from some of the processes. After owning a 30GB gen3 Ipod for a month, I became used to its quick response...although some operations DID take a long time...but it only seems to take longer if you see a stupid icon reminding you that you're waiting. If the operation is <2 sec, an hourglass is unnecessary.

2. Consider changing the silver button to operate as a reverse button in the menu hierarchy. Again, not to rip off the ipod, but it was nice to have a simple way to universally "back out" of any menu subsystem. Maybe hold the button for 2 seconds for the main menu?

3. Slimming the player down would have been nice, but to be honest I don't spec things for my pocket...I consider the Karma appropriate for me based on holding it in my hands, not by what a marketing website says, although I understand how that might frustrate some people.

4. RMM - what I consider to be a BIG problem, is that I have a few files that don't work well (BuyMusic.com files that don't properly transfer to portables, corrupt MP3 files, etc.). When synching, if RMM comes across one of these "bad" files, the synch halts and reports the error. This causes me to have to find the bad file, "hide" it from RMM, then start the synch again. I think the synch should just skip the file and report the bad ones at the end.

5. RMM - When displaying "My Music", it should allow you to delete a file from its database w/o removing it from the HD...similar to what WMP allows. This way I can remove afformentioned "bad" files from the synching list without having to stuff them in a random folder on my comp.

6. I kind of like the bubbles...maybe it's just me?

7. A manual release/renew command would be kind of nice. Lifting it out of the cradle is kind of ghetto, but not a major concern.

8. Standardize the functions of the scroll / Riostick to operate the same way, regardless of the menu / mode.

Conclusion: After returning my 3G ipod after 3 weeks in mid september so I could wait for the Rio, I have very mixed feelings. I can't help but admire how sleek the ipod is now. I can't honestly say that this product should have been shipped in its current condition. That being said, I am going to keep it because I believe that the folks at DNNA care more about their customers and fixing the problems of the player. I believe that it will become a much more refined player, although not necessarily one for grandma and grandpa. I don't believe that Apple really cares that much about the PC users...I always felt that my iPod had a "hostile" relationship with my PC.

So here's one Karma owner who's not entirely happy, but has faith....
(i'll update my list as I find more suggestions, as I've only had it less than 12 hours)

-John

>I think the reason the wheel doesn't do volume is probably because
>it's easy to accidentally move the wheel when it's in your pocket.

Having it do FF/REW is even worse than that, though.

> I never see an hourglass on my empeg

I suppose you've never used the "shuffle" button on the remote, then.

The wheel doesn't do volume because you would then be unable to change volume from within the menu system, which could be an issue while creating a playlist or something. Dedicated volume buttons get around this.

If users think differently then no doubt it will change for future products.

Rob

Dedicated volume knobs seem to be the way to go. I know that with the empeg, I like to be able to adjust the volume while I'm searching for a playlist or setting.

Me too. But I also very much like being able to use the knob for volume the other 99% of the time.

I'm not sure what it is, but everyone who handles my beta Karma expects the knob to adjust volume, and they are all really shocked when instead it interrupts the current playback with FF/REW. Something very counter intuitive is going on there. Maybe it's a cultural thing.

Cheers

Its genetic we are all gentically programmed that knobs do volume its part of the evloutionary process where we all end up with no legs other to work the pedals of you car and fingers that are 6 inches long and the same size as a pencil.

I'm not sure what it is, but everyone who handles my beta Karma expects the knob to adjust volume, and they are all really shocked when instead it interrupts the current playback with FF/REW. Something very counter intuitive is going on there. Maybe it's a cultural thing.

Sounds like the knob function should become programmable then.

Rob

I notice a lack on consistency in the posts regarding duplication of controls.

On the one hand some people are saying that duplication of controls is a bad thing (For example, with regard to the wheel and the stick doing FF/REW)

On the other hand some people are suggesting that duplication of controls would be a good thing (For example, having both the wheel and the buttons do volume)

I don't think it's possible to generalise when it comes to duplication of controls - You have to look at the control context of every situation differently.

However, if I were forced to generalise I would say that in a situation where the user might want to achieve fewer different operations than there were buttons available to achieve these, then duplication of controls is a good thing if it offers the user a different type of control to achieve the same function.

For example, in the main player screen on Karma, both the stick and the wheel perform seeking - This is a good thing since the user has a choice of seeking mechanisms, seeking with the wheel is a very different experience to seeking with the stick.

The same can be said for the menu system - There are only four operations that the user could possible achieve in the context of the menu system: Up, Down, Select, Cancel/Back. There are more than four controls on the player, and since one of them is a wheel not a button it makes sense to duplicate the up and down button controls to allow for faster navigation through the menu or list.

Further to this, not duplicating controls in some contexts could be potentially concerning for a user. Using the menu system argument again, if we decided not to duplicate any controls then we would only have the stick. The fact that the menu button and the wheel don't do anything would, in my opinion, be more annoying for the user than the fact that they do the same thing as the stick.

There are two counter arguments that need to be finely balanced in order for the resulting product to feel intuitive to use: The duplication of controls, and the overloading of controls.

My feeling on the volume/knob issue is that it would be nice to be able to change the volume with the knob, as Rob suggests this should be a user configurable thing. However, I don't favour the dialog box approach to configuring the wheel for Karma. I think that the wheel should be configurable by pressing and holding the wheel which brings up a widget with which you select the wheel function (seek, volume, etc) you click the wheel when you have chosen the desired function. This way we can assign any number of future enhancements to the wheel (for example cross fade period could be set in this way, or shuffle setting chosen, or even pitch control of the audio) and the user gets the ultimate choice of what they want their wheel to do.

Toby.

I second that idea. I expected volume there as well. If the dial was also volume, and you wanted to be able to control volume when in the menus, perhaps volume control could move to the two side buttons while menus are open or in the Prev/Next style screen (where the dial is used to roll through the list).

-Zeke

I think that the wheel should be configurable by pressing and holding the wheel which brings up a widget with which you select the wheel function (seek, volume, etc) you click the wheel when you have chosen the desired function. This way we can assign any number of future enhancements to the wheel (for example cross fade period could be set in this way, or shuffle setting chosen, or even pitch control of the audio) and the user gets the ultimate choice of what they want their wheel to do.

Well, anyone who has ever set Hijack to do "PopUp0" on the Empeg knob (aka "wheel") knows that I am a big fan of this approach!

The problem with the current Karma setup is that the wheel is way to easy to bump while handling the player, resulting in "seek" induced skips in the music. It is very rare that a user actually wants to use the "seek" function on purpose, so most of the time it is very annoying to have it active by default. But the knob IS the best interface by far for "seek", so..

Cheers

Toby,
The press and hold re-definition concept - it would seem that this redifinition would have to be context aware (for example - on the 'track' info screen you may want the dial to be the volume, but on the now/next/prev screen you may want it to have the default behavior).

I agree that a universal redefinition might not be the way to go.

Also- a 'return to factory defaults' would be handy, in both the granular press/hold situation as well as in the global settings, to restore all button redefinitions to factory presets.

-Zeke

Zeke,

I don't envisage the wheel mapping functionality I propose affecting anything other than the functionality of the wheel on the 'track' info screen - That is to say that this wheel functionality would not be available in the 'Now/Next' screen, or for the sake of argument the menu system.

The current functionality of the wheel is different in the 'track' info screen to the 'Now/Next' screen anyway, and this hasn't to the best of my knowledge caused much in the way of confusion.

Since the chosen user wheel setting would persist over a power cycle, the setting would automatically get reset to a default (could be the current seeking behaviour, or 'off' for nothing meaning that it won't do anything whilst in the pocket) by the current factory reset functionality - Which I have just remembered isn't currently exposed to the user via any menu option, so scratch that last paragraph. I can't remember why there isn't a return to factory defaults user option, do we need one? Personally I'm not convinced we do.

it would seem that this redifinition would have to be context aware

Which is exactly what some users were complaining about...

Tony - It seems to me that a global redefinition would goof up things that the user hadn't considered (like menus or now/next/previous issues) [nice avatar BTW]

-Zeke

[nice avatar BTW]

Thanks! SE_Sport_Driver said he missed Master Kan, so I'm bringing him back for a while.

We have with the empeg a choice for which side the sony stick is on and this is done via the PC software so would it be a leap to make the same kind of implementation for the Karma with you being able to choose this through a option in emplode (or whatever you call it now).

We all know what is capable of being done but going down a route that everyone likes is the problem i have only briefly played with a beta unit which was being a bit temperamental so i can't really say what i think, But yes to my mind knobs mean volume.

Is the knob pushable like it is on scrolling mice ?

Is the knob pushable like it is on scrolling mice ?

Yup.

thinfourth,
I'm sure that could be an option, but my opinion is that the more things that can be set w/o needing the PC the better.

For the record, there is a right/left handed setting on the Karma. I haven't used it, mind you, but it is there.

-Zeke