Rdio is, by far, one of my most used applications on my internet-connected devices. Whether it be my Android phone, ChromeOS laptop, Roku, or Macbook, Rdio is always providing the soundtrack to my life. Last week, when I picked up my Motorola Xoom, it was only natural that I install the Rdio app for Android to test the large screen of the Xoom. These are my findings.
The first thing I noticed after launching Rdio was that the layout of the Heavy Rotation panel only displays two columns of album art. This creates a large amount of whitespace to the right, center, and left of the artwork. This could simply be corrected by allowing Rdio to automatically display an approproate number of columns based on the width of the screen. Even on my Nexus One, with its 800px horizontal resolution, the two columns are padded by a large whitespace.
In portrait mode, the whitespace is reduced, but still obvious.
One of the most obvious areas of improvement for all non-tablet-optimized applications is a redesign of ListViews. In this example, we see that the content remains on the left side of the screen, creating a huge whitespace on the rest of the device. This can only be corrected by designing a layout specifically for the tablet form factor. For comparison, here is the default Honeycomb music player. Notice the use of other metadata such as artist, album, length, album art, and release year to fill the available whitespace, creating an interface that is more aesthetically pleasing and conveys more information in one spot.
In the “Now Playing” screen, album art takes center stage thanks to Rdio’s use of a fluid layout for this particular section. However, improvements can be made to the control panel on the right hand side. It would be nice to see a list of songs that are in the current play queue, or more information about the currently playing song.
The notification system in Honeycomb has undergone several improvements. These improvements make it easier to gain more information at-a-glance. The Rdio running notification currently displays the currently playing track in a gray color that is almost indistinguishable from the black background of the notification window. Also, the notification icon is a remnant of the pre-Android 2.3 days where the notifications bar was a gray gradient. Now, on the most recent version of Android for mobile phones, the notifications bar is a simple black, requiring simple gray notifications (such as the Android debugging notification seen here.). Furthermore, these popups can provide more than just information: they can give the users control over their applications. For instance: the Honeycomb music player’s notification popup provides play controls.
Most of these suggested improvements would require Rdio developers to create tablet-specific layout resources for Rdio. The documentation for the use of x-large layouts in Android can be found here. However, some of these suggestions could benefit users of existing Android mobile phones by following best practices for screen independence.
Dylan Staley is an Information Systems and Decision Sciences major from Louisiana State University who is passionate about beautiful, functional interfaces, user experience design, and the Android platform.
