Mark Block wrote:
These are very minor quibbles, and typical of how interface designers are "****** if you do, ****** if you don't." What's "more complex" to one user may be more intuitive to another. Personally, I'd be very confused if iTunes switched views automatically when filtering after a search. I'm in a particular view for a reason, presumably, so it would be very presumptuous of iTunes 11 to switch to the Songs view just because I'm filtering by "songs" when in, say, Artists view. What you're asking for seems like bad design to me.
I am a big believer in the "Nudge" principle. I think there should be a default option how things appear to us, not a long list of check boxes. And the default option should neither be a blank slate, nor some arbitrary setting.
So for example when you use Spotlight, it always searches files from all dates, no matter what you did before. If you want to limit the search to a specific date range, you need to add a qualifier like
"date:>10/1/11". However, next time you search, Spotlight switches back to all files (unless you specify a date range again).
Coming up with a smart Nudge is a hard job to do, and it is always easier for a UX designer to simply offer a lot of options without making any suggestions.
When I search for "stars" and limit that search to "Songs", there is actually a view to list songs, called "songs". Why not switch to it? Just to avoid overruling user's choices? iTunes 11 does not even do that: When you select "Genres" view in say "Movies", you don't stay in "Genres" view when switching to "Music" or "TV Shows". View choices are sticky to library categories, but not to search options. Why?
Let me try to explain why it migt be a good idea to adjust views with filtered searches: Practically, if you look at search results for songs in the Albums view, you see a lot of album covers, but no songs, as content of albums in not shown in this view. In the Artists view, you see lots of album covers. From most Albums only one song will qualify as a hit, so you end up with lot of white space on the screen, which makes it hard to quickly identify the song you were looking for.
As a UX designer you might have one of two approaches in this scenario: Either the user will use the song title as the only clue, and perhaps a pre-listen - then make that simple. Or the user will use the cover as key clue, then arrange covers in a way that this becomes easy (e.g. present album covers in multiple rows, with macthing song titles underneath each). Right now it is neither of these, the result screen actually lacks an intentional UX design. Playing around with iTunes 11, you might discover that lots of screens you run into seem to lack any intentional design, but are seem to defined solely by technical parameters.
On the other hand many conceptional elements come in various visual designs. For example a list of songs could appear in three places: The main box, as a pull down from the search box (instant search results), and the "Up Next" list that pulls down from the "now playing" box. Each of these presentations as a slightly different interaction design, i.e. different context menu etc. I would call this a lack of integrated UX, or lack of design consistency.
To me that is not a small annoyance but a major change in UX approach - or some really really bad UX testing.
