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| A portal is only as good as the tile application that serves the portal. Such is the case with the changes at TuneIn on the ROKU portal. Image Credit: Edmund Jenks via YouTube |
TuneIn & Changes For Changes Sake On ROKU Tile Application
Changes are the nature of living life here in technology America, as anyone who has had to evolve through the landscape can attest, concerning access to information and entertainment in this digital age.
A point of order given the observations and experience achieved witnessing the changes (for appearent changes sake) with TuneIn in general, and through their tile application on ROKU personal Internet streaming and display device in specific, have the evolution of these changes defy user simplicity as well as strong brand recognition as protrayed through graphic representation.
Funny thing about this change, MasterCard just announced that it will no longer display the words Master Card along with their dual circle multicolor design folks associate with the card company ... similar to what NIKE has done for years - a drive toward Corporate graphic recognition and representation Swoosh as opposed to the word(s) Corporate logo recognition.
In general, as it relates to this brand recognition thing, given the pursuit of best practices was fleshed out just recently with the announcement by MasterCard (the personal spending through credit card company) to drop their name as an instrumental part of the logo in all future business messageing and advertising.
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| Original logo - colored circles with corporate name embedded. Image Credit Mastercard, Inc. us |
This excerpted and edited from Wall Street Journal -
Mastercard Drops Its Name from Logo
Move asserts payment network’s place among brands that can go by symbol alone
By Nat Ives - Jan. 7, 2019
Mastercard Inc. is removing its name from its logo in most contexts, leaving the interlocking red and yellow circles to represent the brand on cards, in stores, at events and in advertising.
The move continues an effort to play down the “card” in “Mastercard” as new payment methods and technologies spread. It also places the company among a small group of marketers such as Apple, Nike and Target that have preferred to go by visual symbols alone.
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| Original logo - colored circles with corporate name embedded. Image Credit Mastercard, Inc. us |
Mastercard conducted more than 20 months of world-wide research to make sure people could identify it from the logo even without text, according to Raja Rajamannar, chief marketing and communications officer at Mastercard.
“You can never be arrogant and say ‘I’m iconic, and let me go ahead and drop my brand name,’” Mr. Rajamannar said.
t works for Mastercard but wouldn’t for many brands, said Debbie Millman, chair of the Masters in Branding program at the School of Visual Arts. “The only brands that are able to do this have developed a logo with global recognition over decades,” she said in a text message. “It takes time, consistency and a good logo to begin with to be able to do this effectively.”
Marketers often want an abstract symbol to stand for their company, said Michael Bierut, partner at the design consulting firm Pentagram, which led the development of Mastercard’s new look. “People really want that Nike swoosh or Apple apple,” he said. “The trick is you can’t fast-forward that process, really.”
In addition to allowing for a broader business than cards, the new logo stands out better on portable digital devices, Mr. Bierut said. “You’re trying to optimize for a very small piece of real estate on a very small piece of glass,” he said. “It might not even be a mobile phone, it might even be a watch face. Having to work in a 10-letter name in that is kind of a monster.”
[Reference Here]
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| Original graphic representation logo. Image Credit: TuneIn |
Last year, TuneIn decided to move away from this logic that Mastercard, who conducted research on for more than 20 months on a world-wide basis that people could identify the company from the logo alone, by dropping their already adopted iconic representation to a word embedded approach. With this recent move by a company with the resources as Mastercard, what TuneIn had done was to undo and dismantle a keel of a perfectly running Marketing and Public Relations ship.
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| Latest logo where the company name is embedded into the Rectangle/Square graphic. Image Credit TuneIn |
Recently, TunIn has been playing with the programming interface it has created for access use with the Internet streaming player that on hooks up to their display device, ROKU. TuneIn changed the application interface/Tile upon wich one accesses the TuneIn provided service. The change was very disruptive and ... drastic in its "re-adoption" and use.
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| Xylophone, a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets. Image Credit: Edmund Jenks via Cosmo Music (2019) |
This from an email sent to TuneIn by the publisher of Symblogogy -
additional comments not italicized
Your company has recently changed the application for use of your service on ROKU and it is a complete dissappointment from a user experience when compared with the application it replaced.
The first, and most annoying aspect, is that the tool seems to send an acknowledgement signal (on a random basis) to the ROKU and the ROKU answers back with its low-note acknowledgement xylophone style chime - it is a constant reminder of how bad this version of TunIn really is.
YES, the chime continues every minute to severel minute random intervals - it's as if the TuneIn tool is giving a "ping" to ROKU and, of course, ROKU respons the only way it knows how to. This needs to be done 100% in the background without the user being signaled that this Ping has taken place.
Second, when TuneIn put the change in motion, NONE of the saved presets were retained so a total re-program of the application had to be performed - the nature of how this saved programming is displayed and accessed makes using the tool much more difficult and less enjoyable than the previous application tool.
Third, the Search feature yeilds much less information choices and consequently is much less helpful to its use.
For Example - if one were to search for a specific live radio presentation, we'll use Red Eye Radio in this example, what the previous version of the interface program would yeild is a selection tile where, when chosen, would harvest the complete listing, in the form of choice tiles, of all the radio stations across the country that were airing the radio show at that time. The very cool benefit from this approach was that it delivered the show but by being able to choose a radio station outside of one's geography, it acted as an audio cultural travelogue. Very enriching and sublime to the searching listener.
In comparison, if one's experience with the previous application tool was a solid B pushing toward an A ... the new tool, at best, is a C pushing toward a D for overall useful and effective user experience.
Other negitives include the way the information that is displayed by the tool is more similiar to CRACKLE (layred for movies and video) as opposed to what TuneIn delivered before - a simple and faster scrool and click on the single specific catagory - in this case, programmed favorites only with very quick launching process (unlike the painful experience the tool goes through now).
To be honest, the newer tool just seems to have added clicks to get to where one wishes to end up, even after one has programmed the tool with "Favorites" ... especially if one or more of the favorites were a national radio program presentation with the lack of the additional information harvested by the previous version of the tool.
Recommendation? Go back to the previous tool and improve that approach for your desired intentions as opposed to the turn-off you currently use.
Thanks for listening.
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| Original graphic representation logo, white background. Image Credit: Android Plazza |
RESPONSE FROM TuneIn -
Hello Edmund,
Thank you for contacting TuneIn with your feedback.
I want you to know that we truly appreciate your feedback about our Roku app update for this will help us further improve the feature of our app. I’ll be sure to bring it to the attention of the team for consideration for a future update.
Feel free to email us if you have further suggestions, feedback or concerns.
Sincerely,
XXXXXXXX
TuneIn, Inc.
In this case, the changes to TuneIn put in play over this last full year has the company becoming less recogniseable and harder to use, at least with ROKU, while delivering an overall less benefical experience in terms of search and ease of choices yeilded to the end user.
Here, at Symblogogy, an old standard to live by ... if it ain't broke, don't fix it ... seems applicable with the changes in the automation to a process or method at TuneIn and it's hosting at the ROKU streaming portal.
TAGS: TuneIn, ROKU, acknowledgement chime, ping, search, tiles, Rectangle Square, stylised human t, logo, automation, choice, Symblogogy
