Updated UX Design for Roku Version 6.6.8 is a step backwards

Server Version#: Version 1.20.0.3181
Player Version#: Version 6.6.8

Version 6.6.8 was pushed to the official channel so wanted to add some feedback on this changed UX design as in some respects it feels like a step backwards:

1: Regarding how both show and movie summaries are now displayed on the roku most are truncated for me with movies being particularly bad. Have included two screenshots as examples:

I have highlighted the box which displays the summary text and you can see its only sized to half the roko screen leaving a load of dead space. Having to click the summary to read more details is a bad design and the box should be increased so more text can be displayed.

2: If you look at the screenshots for movies you will see the cast heads are cut in half on the screen when you open it up while on shows it is not. This looks messy and unprofessional. Shows are better in this regard as you can see the cast text and can scroll down to see them.

3: Personal view point but I dislike the new orange bar which displays for show episodes which have been watched. The orange triangle for unwatched in the previous version was better IMO. Also, movies still use this style and shows don’t so again, consistent problems here.

4: The next unwatched TV Show should be in the middle of the screen or on the far left. As you can see in the screenshot its on the far right which makes no sense at all. My eyes keep jumping around the screen until I figure out which episode is next. Poor design.

This is just very quick while looking at the new design last night. If I find more issues I’ll update this thread later.

13 Likes

Agreed. Very disappointing.

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I don’t like this new design either, it is NOT an improvement in any way shape or form. The buttons are now huge for “Play” and “Mark As Played” etc, they don’t need to be this big and so much lower on the screen. This looks more like a design for children than adults to get their attention by being so large.

I don’t like the “E1, E2, E3” for episode numbers being pasted onto the episode thumbnails because it partially covers them. Before you could see the entire thumbnail, the E and number for the episode should be below the thumbnail but not over it so it doesn’t block it.

I don’t like the orange progress bar all the way across the thumbnail from left to right noting “All Watched” it was much better with just the orange triangle in the upper right for “Unplayed” and then gone for “Played”. The orange progress bar was better just for partially watched videos so you could see how far into the video you left off.

Also I don’t like the terms “Played” and “Unplayed” replacing “Watched” and “Unwatched”. I know this was not a recent change and was done a while back but I think that also looks worse and should be changed back to how it was.

Before on the TV shows episode list the episode being highlighted had a bigger version of its thumbnail at the top of the screen with the list of episodes below it. This was nice because you could see a larger thumbnail of the episode and could quickly identify which one was highlighted. Now we don’t get that, we just get the list once without the one highlighted being larger. Also the info below the horizontal episode list looks worse than before, it was better when the info was at the top and the row was at the very bottom. Very poor changes.

The only good thing about this update is in TV shows you can go to the top of the screen and easily go to a different season rather than having to back out one menu and select a different season by it’s box cover.

So basically I am not happy with this at all and I want the old version back, keep the new option to switch seasons at the very top, but put the rest back to how it was!

Stop trying to fix things that aren’t broken! All you are doing is taking something that looked fine and making it look worse! Designers really love to mess with things just for the hell of it, well this is an overall downgrade.

8 Likes

100% agree – if a college student handed this in for review it would get a D grade and they would be told to do better.

I also suspect that whoever done this work DID NOT USE A ROKU to test their work. They probably used some emulator while doing development.

6 Likes

Unfortunately “The Dumbing Down” of the Roku App is by design


 and is really starting to piss me off


That ‘Information Median Strip’ between two areas where you ‘Interact’ is a hazard to navigation and I take it personally when navigation is compromised to bring the app DOWN to the level of Android.

It’s not my fault Android can’t bring their app UP to Roku Standards yet here I am paying the dam price for it.

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I’m willing to give the new layout a shot, but there are some incosistencies that seem like glaring over sights.

Like depending on how you get to a show your content is displayed differently??

If I choose an episode of a show from “Recently Aired” and then say “Go to show” from the menu, I get a carousel style listing of episodes, with no way to choose between seasons!? It is just an endless list of episodes. Plus the text at the top doesn’t even update as you progress deeper into the seasons (in my photo you can see I have highlighted season 2 E1 but the text above still says Season 1). I would expect go to show to be functionally the same as me going to my library and choosing the desired show from the list.

But if I go through the library and choose the same show, I get the expected season view


I just started playing with this today so I’ll report back if I find more issues.

1 Like

Things I do not like about the new Episode Level:

  • Missing orange “widgets” for unwatched episodes which have been replaced by episode numbers (inconsistent across the Plex experience)
  • Watched episodes are greyed out with an orange line beneath them (harder to tell where exactly I am if I’m watching by season. This would be a horrible experience if you adopted it on the movie side. Makes no sense)
  • Titles no longer appear below thumbnails (was easier to identify episodes at a glance before)
  • I should not have to navigate through the description to get to episode browsing (it should be among the first click things I am able to do)

I can’t even say this looks alright with all the changes made to the thumbnails per episode. It ruins the experience for me.

8 Likes

Because it’s a square, blocky mess that looks like it was duct taped to a white board. It doesn’t look like the work we’re used to seeing from The Roku Team Leader - The App Designer that INVENTED UNO and Plex decided that’s what they wanted in their App Parity Universe - until the Android Team couldn’t deliver on Plex’s Big Idea.

Here’s the bottom line:
I don’t care how badly UNO sucks on a Shield/FireTV/Android Box. I don’t care about any compromises in UNO Plex has to make for Android and the Team that can’t bring UNO the way it was designed to their platforms.

I do care when they start bringing The Suck to Roku - 'cause they can’t make the good stuff work on A Shield. Screw a bunch of Shields. That’s why all the Games on a Shield look like ASS - 'cause they’re Console Games - and now Plex wants to bring Console Gaming Design to the masses and the bad news is what we’ll end up with is a crappy Console Port 'cause a crappy Shield has become the new Low Standard for everyone to Design Down To.

Make no mistake - Plex made the right call initially when they wanted UNO as Designed by a User/Developer where the App flows in the way a User would use it - not hammered out on the floor of the work-shop in a way that has to fit on The Milk Truck we’re building a Tank out of - by any means necessary.

8 Likes

I just hope enough people realize how much this one sucks and show up to complain about it
 otherwise developers will be left to think they actually did a good thing.

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My wife and I are not fans of this update either. The first thing is oversized images reducing the amount of information seen on the screen. We both wear glasses and could see everything just fine before.

Secondly, we like to use the shuffle option to watch random TV shows from a series of shows. Now we have to click more button to get to that option. You can see from the first picture in this thread all of the wasted space where the “More” button is and to the right of it. All of the buttons under “More” could fit their easily. There are only 3 buttons under “More” and one of them is the “Return to TV Shows” which is done with less clicks by just using Back on the Roku remote.

Love my Plex, but HATE this update! Please revert and try again.

10 Likes

I think I’ve had enough of this, I want it reverted back. There was absolutely NO NEED to change ANYTHING! It was just fine before until the “intelligent” people at Plex decided to mess with the app. I want the TV shows list back to the way it was before, get rid of the episode numbering over the thumbnails, get rid of the orange full progress bar and bring back the orange unwatched triangle in the corner. Get rid of the oversized images and huge buttons! I can’t believe anyone thought this update was a good idea, any person at Plex that had anything to do with this update should be put on notice, fix it or you are fired!

5 Likes

Exactly! Let’s dumb down the standards and make Plex worse on ALL devices just because certain ones can’t rise to meet the standards of Plex? Screw android and anything else that can’t run UNO properly. Why should we have to dumb things down on Roku with a bad design because of other devices failures? Hey Plex designers, your update is terrible. What are you going to do about it?

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@elan is anyone from the plex team going to respond, comment or acknowledge this thread?

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My guess is they’ll wait a few days to see if the complaints die down and if they do they’ll just ignore us and leave us with this terrible new app design. Everyone has to keep complaining like they did when that bad major update happened in late 2018 that everyone hated and forced them to fix it. It was so bad I remember they brought back the previous Plex version as a “Plex Classic” if I remember correctly for people to use until the new app was redesigned.

Now I don’t think we need that this time, we just need Plex to revert us to the good version we had previously and admit the failure on their end. Which I’m sure they will hate doing because nobody likes being told their work is rubbish, especially when they know themselves it is true


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we’re reading this thread, and others, as we always do :sweat_smile: we’re always interested to hear feedback around the UI.

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Sounds like I’ve wasted my time providing feedback.

I sense I’ve been given the middle finger and told to suck it up, this is how it is now and just deal with it.

THANKS.

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Give it time
 the thread is just developing. I only noticed the update last night. It may be on a staggered rollout.

1 Like

This is a bug, and will be fixed in the next update.


I also want to mention that we are reading this thread, as well as others. I don’t have any more info to share at this time, but that doesn’t mean we are ignoring anything. We appreciate the feedback, especially details (which has been provided) to what has changed for better, or for worse.

5 Likes

Glad to hear Plex is paying attention and not ignoring us. The main thing to remember when updating apps is don’t try to fix things that aren’t broken. If everything looks good and works fine why redesign anything? If people kept that in mind when making updates I think the end results would be much better.

I know this is off topic, but since Plex says it IS paying attention to THIS particular thread I’d love to use it as an opportunity repost a complaint I’ve made about another issue, one that is most definitely being ignored, for over 2 1/2 years now. Can someone please fix this too? It’s ridiculous!

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We have been discussing this one. That is working as expected, however that doesn’t mean the expectation make complete sense. :sweat_smile: