Wrong Icons

[SamHobbs]

When I view a video in my feed there is a gear icon in the upper right corner of the video. I think that is the wrong icon. I think it should be a menu icon. It would help for the settings to be added to that menu.

In the smartphone application in the upper left is a person icon. I think that is where a gear should be.

[jguerdat]

I only see a gear icon when I click on a camera from the Devices display, not from any video in Feed. Are you using iOS? I'm on Android so maybe there's a difference. I see the normal 3 vertical dot menu selection on videos at the top right so I suspect the different apps use a different icon for some reason.

[SamHobbs]

I am using Android and it should be the current version, it has been updated recently.

When I go to Devices I see a number in the upper right of each camera image, I assume a count of the new Feed videos. What I was referring to for the smartphone is the upper-left of the screen, not each image of the cameras. When I click on a camera (to see a live feed) from the Devices I see no icon in the upper-right of the video.

[SamHobbs]

I tried to edit my reply but the edit would not post. The following is an edited version.

When I go to Devices I see a number in the upper right of each camera image, I assume a count of the new Feed videos. When I click on a camera (to see a live feed) from the Devices I see no icon in the upper-right of the video.

What I was referring to for the smartphone is the upper-left of the screen, not each image of the cameras. I see a person icon in the upper-left of the screen.

[SamHobbs]

This UI is more confusing than the old applications.

In the website application, when I go to Devices I see a number in the upper right of each camera image (zero if no new videos). When I click on the number I get a page  for just the camera with a gear icon for the settings. Not what I expected.

They seemed to have tried to save money on the design of the new system and they got what they paid for.

[jguerdat]

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@SamHobbs wrote:

When I go to Devices I see a number in the upper right of each camera image, I assume a count of the new Feed videos. When I click on a camera (to see a live feed) from the Devices I see no icon in the upper-right of the video.

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That's correct - it's the live view so nothing to be changed there. It's always been that way.

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What I was referring to for the smartphone is the upper-left of the screen, not each image of the cameras. I see a person icon in the upper-left of the screen.

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When you click on a camera in Devices but not on the live view button, it brings up a thumbnail of the last recorded video, all videos associated with that camera (like the old Library filter) as well as the gear icon so you can edit settings for the camera. To me, that's a faster way of accessing the camera settings than any other method available. DOes it assault anyone else's sense of correctness? Likely but it works as designed. It gives you immediate information about the camera recordings as well as a way to modify settings. It's different, yes, but you do get the videos from only that camera as before. It just ALSO gives you access to more info.

[SamHobbs]

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@jguerdat wrote:

That's correct - it's the live view so nothing to be changed there. It's always been that way.

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That sure is not what I remember. As I remember it, in the previous website software when we went to Devices there was a gear icon that took us to the settings. I sure do not remember there being a count of the number of recorded videos.

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@jguerdat wrote:

When you click on a camera in Devices but not on the live view button, it brings up a thumbnail of the last recorded video, all videos associated with that camera (like the old Library filter) as well as the gear icon so you can edit settings for the camera.

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I do not know what you mean by live view button but when I go to Devices from the main menu then that is where there was a gear icon for each camera. For me, when I go to Devices from the main menu, I do not get a thumbnail; I get an image the same size as the video when a video is played. Then when I click on the image but outside of either of the icons in the image I see the image again, with rows for the various recorded videos with a thumbnail for each. When I did do that using this software, I saw the rows of recorded videos and assumed that page had no value to me. For me, I prefer to see the videos in chronological sequence as in the Feed. If a cat comes from the front yard and goes to the back yard then I need to see that in chronological sequence.

I think they are working on it but they did not have it right and backed the change out. If so then they do not have Quality Assurance like businesses should. Earlier today when I hovered over a camera, a couple of icons appeared, one I think was an ellipse (three dots) and when I clicked on that, a pop-up menu was shown with Settings as an item. When I clicked on it I got the settings for the browser, not the camera. I cannot find that anymore.

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@jguerdat wrote:
To me, that's a faster way of accessing the camera settings than any other method available. DOes it assault anyone else's sense of correctness? Likely but it works as designed. It gives you immediate information about the camera recordings as well as a way to modify settings. It's different, yes, but you do get the videos from only that camera as before. It just ALSO gives you access to more info.

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User interfaces should work the way users expect them to. Since I had no interest in viewing the recordings for each camera separately, I did not know that that view had the features it has.

For the feed, I have a list of suggestions for making the feed much more efficient. How should I submit the suggestions?

[jguerdat]

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@SamHobbs wrote:

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@jguerdat wrote:

That's correct - it's the live view so nothing to be changed there. It's always been that way.

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That sure is not what I remember. As I remember it, in the previous website software when we went to Devices there was a gear icon that took us to the settings. I sure do not remember there being a count of the number of recorded videos.

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I have to remember also since I've been using only the new UI for some time. In Devices (old UI), I think you're correct that there was the Live View play button, a circle with the number of new videos (below the thumbnail) and a gear to get to that camera's settings. A sample screenshot I happened to find of mine to demonstrate:

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@jguerdat wrote:

When you click on a camera in Devices but not on the live view button, it brings up a thumbnail of the last recorded video, all videos associated with that camera (like the old Library filter) as well as the gear icon so you can edit settings for the camera.

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I do not know what you mean by live view button but when I go to Devices from the main menu then that is where there was a gear icon for each camera. For me, when I go to Devices from the main menu, I do not get a thumbnail; I get an image the same size as the video when a video is played. Then when I click on the image but outside of either of the icons in the image I see the image again, with rows for the various recorded videos with a thumbnail for each. When I did do that using this software, I saw the rows of recorded videos and assumed that page had no value to me. For me, I prefer to see the videos in chronological sequence as in the Feed. If a cat comes from the front yard and goes to the back yard then I need to see that in chronological sequence.

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The live view button is the embedded "play" arrow in the middle of each camera's thumbnail (yes, it's large but still a still frame from the last video so it's a thumbnail, regardless of size).

Regardless, the new UI has a different way of achieving the same thing as the old UI. Yup, takes some experimentation and exploration but it gets you what you need. In the new UI case, clicking on a camera gets yo a thumbnail of the latest video as well as videos filtered by only that camera. In the old UI, you'd go to Library and set a filter or click on the number circle for the camera which would filter only those specific videos from that camera. In Feed, you get ALL videos, not a filtered version. And they're all in chronological order, just not filtered in any way.

Hovering over a thumbnail in the old Devices didn't offer a menu, as I remember it. 

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@jguerdat wrote:
To me, that's a faster way of accessing the camera settings than any other method available. DOes it assault anyone else's sense of correctness? Likely but it works as designed. It gives you immediate information about the camera recordings as well as a way to modify settings. It's different, yes, but you do get the videos from only that camera as before. It just ALSO gives you access to more info.

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User interfaces should work the way users expect them to. Since I had no interest in viewing the recordings for each camera separately, I did not know that that view had the features it has.

For the feed, I have a list of suggestions for making the feed much more efficient. How should I submit the suggestions?

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UIs change. I agree that sometimes engineers set things up for other engineers. However, if we had started with this UI and then switched to the (what is now) old UI, there would also have been complaints - there always have been even without changes such as this one.

As for suggestions, @JamesC is collecting and passing them on. PM him with appropriate suggestions.

[SamHobbs]

The images you show are from a smartphone and I seldom use my smartphone for Arlo.

To get back to the original post, this is a sample of what I see in Feed in the website; just the relevant portion of the form. The gear icon is not for settings for that form. The gear icon in that form is a menu with commands such as download and delete.

And I am a programmer. I know that programmers must invest much time to make a UI easy for users. I also know the value of design. A good design is critical. I think I spent more time specifying the programs I wrote or modified than my peers. And specifications do not need to be done by a programmer, I got some excellent specifications from a manufacturing engineer for developing programs to pick out tools and materials from manufacturing instructions for aircraft.

[jguerdat · Accepted solution]

I guess I was mixing up various parts of our conversation. FWIW, the app shows the 3 dot menu while the web client shows the gear. Yes, I agree the same icon should be used and the gear is somewhat misleading.

Also FWIW, I'm a retired systems administrator/IT manager and have had to deal with all sorts of "designed for engineers by engineers" sort of apps/programs. I understand fully a source of frustration from inconsistent usage that a user has to decode.

BTW, you ended up sending me a list of suggestions when you meant to send them to @JamesC . Click on his link just to the left here to get to his profile so you can send him your PM of suggestions.