That’s not really how product design work plays out.
We were redesigning the queue screen to split it into “what’s happening now” and “detailed control/information about what’s coming up”. That was the first goal. This was necessary because we had things we wanted to fit onto the now playing screen (mainly, lyrics, to bring Roon into parity with Displays) that couldn’t fit on a combined screen.
So, we drew the line between “now” and “upcoming” and made one screen for each. Both screens were able to grow into the increased real-estate and become better.
The old fullscreen now playing view was an extremely rarely used feature, and more of an experiment than anything else. We didn’t give very much consideration to how it was done because practically no-one ever used it. It was only included because Sooloos used to have this screen…not for good, thought-out product reasons.
We did consider briefly duplicating “up next” on the new now playing screen, but felt that the use case of seeing what’s next was something better opted-in-to on the queue screen.
I realize that hearing about the anxiety/serendipity axis in product design may be new to you, but it’s not new to us. It’s an important consideration–would it be more pleasing to have full information, or to be pleasantly surprised–is an important consideration when designing product. It’s one of the reasons why we put such a clear line between “now playing” and “queue” in this design, but not the only one.
We are going to re-consider adding an album art screen.
This will get better as image updates roll out to your systems over the next 7-10 days. Part of that data rollout is sending down side-channel data on how to better crop the images for display. There was no way to release both the new software + the data updates at the same time, so we de-emphasized the data portion in the release notes, but you won’t really be having the intended experience until both are done. This is not an area that can ever be 100% perfect, but it will be much better than what you’re seeing now once the rollout is done.
I explained this a bit above. We don’t agree with this–the old queue screen was cramped and trying to serve too many purposes. We drew a line in a clear place that makes sense. This wasn’t done carelessly.
It’s telling you which profile put that item into the queue. In a multi-user home, you can then see who added what. Those plays are recorded to the individual “histories” for the profile, and give each person a different radio/discover/overview experience, separate ownership of playlists, etc.
No you’re not. The queue screen isn’t gone–click the “Queue” button on the footer.
That button shouldn’t be there (cc @vova). Playlists are not good radio seeds.