Sky Glass usability irks and suggestions for improvements.

[Bartopia]

As I understand it Sky are using Agile development methodology for Sky Glass which inherently has user centre design (UCD) at it's very core. Surprising therefore that there seems to be some fairly glaring usability issues which one imagines should have been picked up early on in the development lifecycle.

I've seen various posts listing peoples gripes but thought it would be useful to list these out here  in the hope that someone from Sky will see them and provide any updates whether these are to be addressed in coming releases. 

Ideally this would be a list of user interface issues rather than peoples gripes with the whole glass proposition eg lack of recording capability, cloud or local for example or quality issues with some of the content providers.

I'll start off with a couple with just a few  thoughts based on my initial experience, please feel free to add!

In the TV programmes rail 'select all' is right at the end, should be at the beginning.

In Programme listings, users should be have the ability to order by most recent series first as an option rather than having to scroll right to the end

In my playlist, add the option to order alphabetically or by most recent

Removing programmes from playlist should also remove them from the watch now rail.

Programme list should have the date aired where possible to make it easier to find the latest episode

The ability to mark programmes as watched needs to be improved

Introduce user profiles with their own watchlists

[Trapdoor]

My 'useability' irk is pretty fundamental ... I'd like to be able to turn the damned thing on and it actually switch on and connect to the internet rather than me having to scrabble round the back of the set to power it off and on at least once per day 😡 ... at the moment, some of the other 'niceties' I can live without.

They can faff about with the UI all they like but it don't make a damned bit of difference if you can't actually get the thing to switch on each and every time. You press the button on the remote!

[Chrisee]

@Bartopia thanks for  a very useful post and I would agree with most of your points and would add one of my own which is the lack of feedback on remote inputs cause people to use multiple commands that can crash the interface.

I cant find the post from yesterday but someone helpfully pointed out that you need only a single press on the power or home button to start the TV or puck and to resist the temptation to press repeatedly.. Certainly since doing that I have not had a lock up or failure to start. The issue is you get no response from the unit for quite a while before the picture appears so conclude nothing is happening even using the led to show loading would help..

Its similar during a reboot after power down just the Sky splash screen which then disapears leaving the user puzzling if it is working or not. Q is not perfect but did have loading screens. I suspect several users are  hitting the remote which causes some of the apparent stability issues.

This thread has great potential if people add their own suggested improvements to the UI and resist the temptation to turn into yet another complaint thread. 

[Joe-Bow]

@Bartopia @Chrisee Not a UI issue as such, however I found yesterday I could get the "Technical Fault On This Channel"  by frequently switching between the UHD football and regular content.  Seems like a bug of some sort, memory leak maybe, but if I can get a chance to check this again today I will, in the meantime it may be more stable for people to try to keep this sort of thing to a minimum.

[Joe-Bow]

Also, something UI I did find by accident but hadn't read before (and obviously wouldn't read anything anyway working in IT 😉) how to do it so apologies if it's obvious, but if you hold your finger on the right button for a few seconds while in the TV guide, it brings up the jump 24 hours option.  

Thought that omitting it was a bad idea, but glad it's still there.

[Johno159]

Ideas for improvement.

Be able to use voice in YouTube, really good on my old TV but not available on glass. 

Option to remove any item in the play list, multiple programmes on multiple channels not able to remove. 

Icon to appear in play list when new episode available. 

Play list to have sky purchases listed as standard.

[Jayboy1990]

I wished voice control would work in all apps, going to leave room and saying 'hello sky..pause/play' when in iplayer, itv, all4, Netflix etc.