Specific Critiques of the Top Menu Bar Roku Plex Experience

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My background. I develop software and do UI/UX testing as a part of my job. I also realize that this post is the height of first-world problems.

Let me preface this by saying that since I no longer have access to previous version of the Roku Plex player some of the specific details may not be exactly correct, but they should close enough.

This post is comparing the previous Left Menu Bar [LMB] vs the new Top Menu Bar [TMB].

My goal is not just to minimize clicks, but also to minimize button shifts, and to prevent penalties from errant over clicks.For example, having to shift from the direction arrows to the * button is very annoying.

The TMB interface loads more slowly than the LMB and then it negates any navigation that you have done while the Home screen is loading.

Tip: I just turned off Spring-Loading and that seems to have mostly fixed the loading issue.

When Spring-Loading is turn on, navigation is functionally disabled until loading is complete. If you have tried to navigate somewhere you will have to back out to Home and start again.

Navigation Issue 1: Changing Libraries

  • Tip: If you press the back button enough times from anywhere it will eventually get you back to the Home Library.
  • With the TMB, from Home, you must press left, then down, then right or left and finally select.
  • I take issue with the unnecessary direction changes.

    • If you accidentally press down twice, then you exit the sub menu and must start over.

    • If you move onto Libraries and press select (which is how Plex has trained me to operate) then it just chooses the last selected Library and takes you out of the menu.

    • Whether you consider this behavior a bug or a feature is likely dependent on how long you have been using Roku Plex.

  • Ultimately, the mixing of navigation behaviors is less intuitive and muddles the Roku Plex experience.
  • With the LMB, from Home, you simply went up or down to find the right Library and then pressed select to choose it. This was much cleaner and did not lead to errant key presses.

Navigation Issue 2: Switching from Recommended to Browse

  • In the TMB, you must navigate to the Library and then press the * button and select button.
  • In the LMB, you could switch between Recommended and Browse only the using the direction and select buttons.

Navigation Issue 3: Switching from Browse back to Recommended

  • In the TMB, you must go all the way back to Home and then reselect the desired Library.
  • In the LMB, you could just press back to get back to the top and then press left and select to return to Recommended.

Navigation Issue 4: Navigating to the Watchlist.

  • In the TMB, the watchlist is a small icon off the left.
  • In the LMB, the watchlist was a Library selection along with everything else.
  • My primary annoyance here is that it is too easy to overshoot the tiny watchlist icon. This was a bigger issue when spring loading was on.

Navigation Issue 5: The TMB server sub-menu

  • This one is harder to quantify, but the TMB + sub menu just behaves kind of janky. You also can’t just see your list of Libraries so you have to take a moment mentally to find the right library after the sub menu has opened.
  • Do I hate it because it is bad or do I hate it because it is different?
  • I believe that I hate it because it is less intuitive, increase mental load, and is more prone to errors caused by errant key presses.

UX Issue 1: On Demand and Discover

  • I don’t care about these. I don’t use them and will never use them. They are visual clutter and I should be able to hide them.
  • The inability to hide these is an example of enshittification as Plex attempts to increase its bottom line at the expense of the user experience. I started using Plex because it was easy, clean, and reliable. I guess 1 out of 3 ain’t bad.
  • And don’t get me started on all of the bullshit we Roku users have to deal with on the Roku Home page.

UX Issue 2: Library List

  • I like being able to see all of my libraries in a single list. In this case, the LMB included Home, My Stuff, and just my selected Libraries. I could include On Demand or Discover if I cared about them. My guess though is that the vast majority of people did not include them, so Plex decided to force them on us.
  • I imagine Plex’s response to this has to do with screen real estate for people with lots of libraries, but that is not a compelling argument. They could simply have included an option to make each tile smaller.

Conclusions

Since the TMB isn’t going away and the LMB will not be an option …

  • Spring-Loading needs to be fixed or navigation needs to be disabled until Sprint-Loading is finished loading.
  • There should probably be some sort of navigation tutorial included. Maybe a question mark to the right of settings.
  • From there, my suggestion can only make the TMB suck less. I don’t really see any way to properly fix it. That being said:
    • Swap the placement of Search and My Stuff.
    • Add the ability to hide On Demand and Discover
    • Allow me to add libraries directly to the TMB and then use the sub menu to do things that the * menu does (e.g. Browse). This effectively becomes a worse LMB, but it would still be better than what we have.

If I think of anything else, I will update this post.

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