Apple is commended for its well-thought product interaction. I have used both iterations of Apple’s iPod Shuffle and have a few suggestions to make the interaction richer. While the idea behind the Shuffle is to mix up your life by mixing your music is all commendable, I think there are a few drawbacks with the Shuffle in continuous play mode. These drawbacks can be easily overcome.

With ambient design features such as beeps and tones, Apple could overcome most of the drawbacks with the Shuffle. The lack of beeping to indicate that an action has been received by the device is the biggest UI issue with the Shuffle. The beep provides audible reassurance to the user that their request for the next song, to stop or to pause has been registered. The beep can then be repeated to indicate things like pausing - that is if the device is drawing a current while it is paused, which it might not to save battery.

The next feature might require a little more work and is specific to the way that I like to listen to music, so it might not have much applicability to the general populous. I listen to music by albums and playlists. It would be nice if the Shuffle could move forward by an entire album or playlist while navigating your music. The way I envision this working is by triple clicking the direction that you want to go. When you triple click, you move forward an entire album and a distinct sound is played to indicate your action.

The last feature has nothing to do with interacting with you music and everything to do with orienting yourself to the Shuffle. The Shuffle is a symmetric design with its squarish shape, circular controls, and small form factor. The controls are offset a little to one side, but that is not enough to orient the user to it. The Shuffle needs a physical indicator to give feedback to the user. A little raised dot on the track forward side of the control circle is all this is needed. With that slight tactile feedback, the user is completely oriented and ready to control his music selection.

Armed with these three seemingly easy to implement features (Audible indicators for tracking, album/playlist skip, and control orientation), the Shuffle can overcome some of its worse interaction design issues.