When watching a movie or listening to a podcast on a mobile device, using the seek bar (aka scrubbing) can be one of the most difficult techniques to master. The button is too small, the bar isn’t accurate enough, and it doesn’t jump to where it should. The currently used UI was made for a mouse, not a thumb.
Too Small
The button and the scrub bar are too small. A person navigating with a mouse can click them fine, but not when using their thumb. You try and grab a hold of the button and you accidentally seek forward a few minutes, creating a new problem. Most, if not all, controls on a mobile device are quite large, why must this control be so different?
Let’s pretend the video player only needs a seek bar. Where should we put it? How about everywhere. You hold your finder down anywhere on the screen for a second or two, and ba-boop, up pops the video’s current time. Don’t move it and the video continues to play unhindered and the time increases accordingly. Move you finger right and the video jumps forward, left and it goes back.
Not Accurate
But pressing the button isn’t the only problem; finding where you want to go isn’t all that easy, either. If you want to find that one scene from Inglourious Basterds—more specifically the beginning of that scene—you’ll move the button around ⅔ along the bar. Then, to find it exactly, you’ll drive yourself crazy moving left and right until you give up and just watch the scene before it, too.
If you move two pixels to the left, you’re looking for an almost specific frame. If you move half-way across the screen, you’re not expecting to land on the perfect time. Touchscreen scrub bars should be exponential, almost like a magnifying glass. The further you move (in a single motion) the more the video will accelerate. Once you’re in the area, you can slow down and find that frame.
And since you can lay your finder down anywhere, you’ll want to start at the left to seek forward, and the right to go back, giving yourself more room to find what you want.
Or
Of course, I have more than one idea for the seek bar. What if there is no bar? What if holding your finder to the right of where you pressed down fast-forwards continuously? And moving further right speeds up the fast-forwarding.
Both seem similar, but accomplish different tasks for different kinds of videos. You seek to a certain place because you want to watch that scene or finishing up listening to that podcast. You fast-forward because you want to skip over commercials or an unpleasant scene from a TV show you haven’t seen before (and thus you don’t know where to seek to).
Other Controls
Tap on the screen to pause (and bring up any necessary video information). Swipe up or down to rise or lower the volume. Standard mouse-based controls are almost useless on a smartphone; it’s about time touchscreens act a little Minority Report-y. ∞
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