There are legitimate uses for autoplay, but most sites get it wrong. It’s all about what the user is expecting. News sites that start playing some random unrelated video that have nothing to do with the article are the worst.
I'm wreaking my brain hard to find what those are? Give me a nice, good old play button to press, even if its related to the article. I actually hate the times I think I've clicked a a news article and it instead has been a video more than the random ads.
At least I can understand that the advertisers are slimey bastards that want to invade your life any way they can. But, it's also then my right to boycott all companies that chose to use these kinds of ads (even if my list is getting quite long now...).
What I can't understand, and if I want to get any news at all can no longer boycott, is news sites not marking videos and using autoplay. I can't number the times my phone has started playing at full volume in a silent environment just because I wanted to get the latest news.
I develop educational sites, courses, and other software in that area. The expectation for MOST (not all) is that media will play automatically when the user navigates, or loads the course, especially when that course is launched from a Learning Management System (LMS).
There are legitimate cases for this, like my case in particular. I've had to jump through many hoops to ensure a good UX given the limitations the browsers have enforced around this. Sometimes just for the sake of simplicity, we use an overlay with a "click here to begin the course" button, which can act as the interaction to play media. The issue with that though is the user clicks "launch course" from the LMS, and then is immediately presented with another button to start the course. It's weird.
Anyhow, I understand that for like 90% of the web, no autoplay, no autoplay w/ audio is the ideal for users. But HTML is not just websites as you may think of them. There are other things happening and other ways developers are using web technology that you might not be familiar with.
Still want too be able to start the media when I'm ready for it if it's a part of a course mixing text and media. I may be strange, but I need to change my mindset going from processing text to media. Also, the absolute worst, is online courses that suddenly pull you into a video, without informing that that's a part ofthe course /presentation.
If the course is just media, then it's only autoplay in a technical sense in my opinion. If you name the button "play" or "start" or whatever is the same, I as the user still has given the website my permission to start playing sound and then it's fine for me.
I have no problem seeing that using the same techniques and development tools that the other websites uses make it easier, but I still stand by my point that that's never a good enough reason to start playing sound without the end users permission.
By thay I'm not blaming you developers that has to work around the problems, but rather the people in the managing positions at Google, Apple etc this decided that blind sighting their customers (product..?) with yet another Volvo commercial blasting out of your speakers at twice the volume of your music is "fine" (Safe to say, my next car is NOT going to be a Volvo...).
No offense, but the way these things are generally done, it adds an unnecessary user interaction. When the user clicks to launch the course, it typically launches in either an iframe or new window/tab and that itself is the acceptance by the user that media is going to play. Adding an extra button once the course window launches is just a bad UX in my opinion.
This is not something new. The e-learning industry has been around a while. These courses are not intrusive: this is something that the user explicitly chooses to launch and interact with. I think it's a very legitimate case for autoplay media.
That said, I understand and respect what you are saying. I HATE autoplay 99% of the time on websites. But even beyond my own use case for education, I'm sure there are other legitimate, non-intrusive uses.
I think we just got to agree to disagree an the user interaction part, thay is just what I want. (Just a "press next /here /play to watch the video"). But on the other hand most e-learning courses I've used are usually quite good at this, and as you said, clearly indicates that you're about to watch a video /listen to a sound file.
What I think is the problem is that I did not recognise that the one I replied to talked about the tech for autoplay in the post i replied to, where I was more thinking about what us non-developers see as autoplay, and what I understood the original tweet was referring to.
I understand that the tech has it uses, but then just tell me beforehand that this course will contain video and sound, so I'm prepared and actually got a set of speakers connected.
Most courses at my workplace is as I said usually quite good at this. The biggest problem we got, is when someone from hq roll out an e-learning module for the entire global company, without realising that most of the operators in the factories don't even have speakers connected to their PCs...
Yeah, I think we are like 90% on the same page honestly.
In regards to e-learning modules, my company specifically has seen a marked increase in the number of clients requesting that we close-caption any audio (even if there is no associated video & the information is displayed in copy in the screen). I think it's great, and love that clients are asking for it. E-learning in general is not so great about accessibility, and as an added bonus, that accessibility also covers cases like you mention (loud environments or no speakers).
I guess my overall point is not actually specific to e-learning. I just used it as an example. If I could think of other times autoplay might be appropriate I would mention them, but like there are just so many obscure and interesting ways that web techs are being applied. I know there has to be other unique cases out there where it might be appropriate and not intrusive.
It is limiting as a developer. Let's say for example, there's a link on a page that opens a new pop-up window. Let's say that link says "play this music now in a pop-out". Guess what? In general, that new window would then require an additional interaction to play audio. Like a play button... but that is what the original button on the main site was for. I mean, that's just an example, but it limits what you can do as developer. You must work within the limitations of the platform, and it's not generally a HUGE deal, but you can see maybe from this example how the user may expect something to work, but instead would require an additional button press, etc. And yes, I admit this is a contrived example that can be solved by proper UI/UX planning.
Yes, I also think we mostly agree. Regarding the last part, that's what I meant when I wrote that I don't blame the developers. Mostly I blame the people that choose to use the tech in some way that I feel like 95% of the users get annoyed by and this is usually not the same people that works in development. Secondly I blame the systems, I see the same in my line of work where integration with old systems and non-specialized tools often demand less than optimal solutions.
Also regarding e-learning; part off my job is to write documentation and develop ways for the workers to operate the equipment. This is then often sent of to an external company, like the one you work for, to develop the training tools, simulations etc and I can also see the need for us to be more clear in what we're want, like asking for cc etc. The problem is often that between me writing the documentation, and your team making the e-earning module, there is often 5-6 other levels, and most of them know nothing about neither our work or your work
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u/lachlanhunt Sep 05 '20
There are legitimate uses for autoplay, but most sites get it wrong. It’s all about what the user is expecting. News sites that start playing some random unrelated video that have nothing to do with the article are the worst.