(2015-12-22, 18:48)digitalhigh Wrote: In terms of some of the things found in most other skins - CD Art, clearart, studio logos, the general "excess" of stuff that can be had with media items - I am *not* going to be utilizing a lot of these things.
One of the biggest concepts behind the leanback UI is to *not* overwhelm the users with a massive amount of choices. In the 10+ years I've been a XBMC/Kodi/HTPC user, I can honestly say I've NEVER had someone scroll through my video/TV library and comment on how amazing the clearart or studio logos are. Nobody's ever cared that there was an icon indicating it's in 5.1 surround or the container is DIVX or MKV. Nobody's ever been floored that the UX has sortable views. Never had someone browse by genre, never had someone browse by year...etc. I point them at the list of titles, and they go.
So, while I fully understand and appreciate the power and amount of info other skins provide - this is not going to be that skin. I think goal #1 is to help people *not* have to go into the library sections - and if they do - only because they have a specific title in mind - and this should be handled by search.
No, this UX/UI is aimed at the "babysitting grandmothers and wives" crowd. You should be able to plunk anybody down in front of this skin (after it's configured), give them a remote, and have them just understand how to get a movie playing. I know kodi is a lot of power users and customized collections - but I want it to be approachable first, and "vast" second.
Hopefully that clears some things up...
Thanks for the explanation. I perfectly understand what you mean and your are absolutely right. Some older skins seem to be overloaded with gadgets, colorful pictures, fanarts and logos. That is what made them look complex and at the same time "improfessional", because professional UIs always seem to concentrate on the usability, not on gadgets. And during the last decades especially Apple used to teach us all the elegance of simplicity (oh my god I am mentioning this in a thread about AndroidTV). I think a lot of the Kodi skin designers have been toying around with all the gadgets that Kodi has to offer and meanwhile got the impression out that the more they make use of them the less elegant or less professional the skin seems to look. That might be the reason why we currently see so many new skins focusing on simplicity and purity. This starts with having no fanarts in the background anymore (or at least just with little opacity) and having all graphics - covers, thumbs etc. - in a frameless and angular design. And it continues with using a clear and simple fonts type. Of course this also implies a restricted use of logos, cleararts, cdarts etc. However, I do not think that it means that you could not use them anymore at all. Otherwise Kodi would end up looking not more like a simple, clean but ugly UI of any SmartTV.
So imho the ultimate goal is to find a way to present all the nice optical advantages that Kodi has to offer in a conservative and elegant way. preserving a simple usability. As to Droid TV this means I would absolutely agree that you should not implement logos, cleararts or cdarts anywhere in the main menu or even in the database views. But I think you could e.g. display the movie logo as a substitute for the movie title on the info screen of the movie. And you could display the artist logo as a substitute of the artist name on the info screen of the artist. And you could overlay the clearart - as usual - on the video screen when pressing info or pause. And you could display a twisting CDart in fullscreen music playback. At least you could make those things as an option the user himself may decide to activate. This way those addional graphics should neither interfere with the google Android TV design nor should they disturb the usability of the skin. But they would unobstrusevely displays some of the nice things Kodi has to offer and - properly done - could give the skin an even more professional touch. Also I think having it this way would possibly make people more comfortable in switching to your skin when it does not mean at the same time "losing" some of the major elements they have already gotten used to and not having part of the graphics they have painfully collected becomming totally obsolet.
But that is just my opinion and a suggestion, no criticism as to your skin design. So keep up the good work. Since I am currently thinking about getting myself an NVidia ShieldTV for christmas I am very interested in this project. Thanks for your hard work that you are generously willing to share with us.
Regards,
FantasticN
