Sonos' $30M app fail is cautionary tale against rushing unnecessary updates(arstechnica.com)
arstechnica.com
Sonos' $30M app fail is cautionary tale against rushing unnecessary updates
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/08/app-redesign-blowback-will-cost-sonos-up-to-30-million-ceo-says/
11 comments
Oh my goodness; the new Sonos app is so unequivocally bad compared to the previous design.
Literally everything I do with our speakers is more difficult now, especially anything that involves searching for music or radio stations.
The new app also removed the ability to "easily" synchronize volumes across a group of speakers by moving the volume slider to zero then to the desired volume.
I honestly don't know what the product team for the app was thinking. It's as if they forewent customer testing in favor of pulling a Steve Jobs.
Literally everything I do with our speakers is more difficult now, especially anything that involves searching for music or radio stations.
The new app also removed the ability to "easily" synchronize volumes across a group of speakers by moving the volume slider to zero then to the desired volume.
I honestly don't know what the product team for the app was thinking. It's as if they forewent customer testing in favor of pulling a Steve Jobs.
Why couldn't they restore the old app in the meantime?
[deleted]
My only guess is sunk cost fallacy sprinkled with some corporate hubris.
Unfortunately the sunk cost fallacy is often rational when you consider reputational consequences of the individuals making decisions within the company.
It's pretty easy to spin an easily reversible decision as "complicated" and "a bit messy", but you'd get fired for taking a risk and wasting years.
It's pretty easy to spin an easily reversible decision as "complicated" and "a bit messy", but you'd get fired for taking a risk and wasting years.
Never underestimate the power of internal company politics? Jokes aside, I do agree with you
The interesting question is: What will Sonos change to make sure that such a desaster will not happen again? Besides some software engineering challanges I see a big failure in the approach to user experience design. It looks like hardly any real user was involved, but that is key to UX design.
> ....until our app experience meets the level of quality that we, our customers, and our partners expect from Sonos.
We'd rather expect you to test before releasing a terrible app. Did you not talk to anyone outside of the chain of 'do as I say, I know best'.
We'd rather expect you to test before releasing a terrible app. Did you not talk to anyone outside of the chain of 'do as I say, I know best'.
Oof. Companies have gained the ability to push updates over the air to hardware a customer bought 5 years ago. Sounds great, now you can get bug fixes and new features, right? ... Or, you know, they can push a "redesign" that introduces tons of bugs and eliminates useful features! Existing customers are now plugged in to corporate dysfunction more than ever before!
Regulators could require a minimum transition period (e.g. 1 year) where existing customers have a choice between old and new apps, i.e. no forced migrations. New customers could be shipped the newest software with their new hardware, as Apple does.
https://en.community.sonos.com/speakers-229128/alarms-didn-t...