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MP3 Player

I thought MP3 players were basically a solved problem, meaning they are only improved in price, storage capacity and battery.

However, there are some design flaws with a new MP3 player I recently got. In this post I just want to collect some design ideas which I think are important.

Physical features:

  • Dedicated volume button (up and down)
  • On-off switch which does not easily get pushed by accident (e.g. a switch, not a button)
  • A single "start / stop" button
  • Navigation buttons: up / down / select (select can be the same button as "play / stop", but then there has to be a way to get out of the menu fast and easy)
  • Illuminated display which is big enough to show battery, current title, playback time. No need to be able to play videos.
  • Standard plug for headphones.
  • Standard Smartphone USB slot (micro-b?) for charging and transfering data.
  • microSD card slot which accepts at least 32GB cards.

Software features:

  • When the MP3 player is shut down while playing an MP3, it should save where it was and play it from this point (or rather 5 seconds earlier) when it is turned on again.
  • Playlists
    • Have a simple, open, standard format for playlists. For example M3U or better XSPF
    • Play playlist files.
    • Create a playlist from a folder.
    • Possibility to remove a song from a playlist
    • Possibility to add a song to a playlist
    • Possibility to move the position of a song in a playlist
  • Act as a simple USB stick when connected to a computer. No special file system should be necessary.

It would be nice if the MP3 player supported USB 3, but I don't think that is necessary.

Published

Jan 2, 2017
by Martin Thoma

Category

Cyberculture

Tags

  • Design 8
  • Device 2
  • MP3 1

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