Do people think the Seeing AI selector is difficult to use?

Hi Steve,

Instead of actually sliding your finger up and down to move through the channel slider/picker, try swiping up or down with one finger. Each swipe up or down should move you forward or backward one channel.

Hope this helps,
Michael

I don’t find the picker particularly dificult, but if they continue to add functions it will become cumbersome. For the same reason, a tabbed interface becomes problematic the more tricks they throw in. Maybe a better approach would be to put up a sheet with all the features on it. People would learn approximately where on the screen the items they use are located and it would be faster than using a picker. Perhaps the items could be moved around like on the share sheet. Given the likelihood that most of us have just a few favorites that we go to, a way to set those as shortcuts at the bottom of the screen could be added. I’m sure this app will only get better with time. It’s already replaced KNFB on my home screen.

Hi,

I can't say that I find swiping up and down through the picker particularly bothersome.
With each swipe moving me one channel at a time, if I swipe fast enough, all that I hear is the channel names.
Steve, One helpful tip may be to use 3D touch from your Home Screen. The App Settings allow you to pre-select 4 favourite channels for the 3D Touch menu. Then, when you use 3D touch you can select which channel the App will open into.

HTH

@SeaNoEvil00

yes I think that tabs or buttens down the boddem or some sort of menu would be good since like you I find it frustrating to keep on swiping up to find the proper program that I am trying to use in the seeing eye app.

Hi. You said you were going to Handwriting but it took you a minute to find it then you ended up with the Color Identifier. I can't reproduce any issue like this. I bring focus to the channel selector, then swipe up a few times until I get to Handwriting. It takes me less than 5 seconds to get there. Then I'm on Handwriting and not on Color Identifier.

Is it possible that your screen is dirty?

Hi folks, this is Anirudh from the Seeing AI team. As Paul, Pete, Larry and Michael mentioned, swiping up or down is usually pretty fast to get to the channel of your choice. Right now, it has 9 channels. As we add more, we do foresee it would take a bit of effort to reach the end. We do plan to give some sort of control to the user to help organize the channels, so you can customize which channels to come first and which to come later.

One good news, the app now supports 3D touch. When you select Seeing AI app, if you press hard press the screen for a few seconds, it will open a channel list with 4 channels right there. This is a quick way to reach the channel you intended directly. Another news, in 2.0 release, we made it customizable, so if you go to Settings within the app, you can choose which channels would you like to show earlier and which later in 3D touch. One side note is 3D Touch is a hardware feature introduced in iPhone 6S and onwards.

<<<We do plan to give some sort of control to the user to help organize the channels, so you can customize which channels to come first and which to come later.>>>

there is one very simple tweak you could do: make the app open to last channel used either by default or an option to do this in settings. right now, short text always comes up at launch. i know most people just love this channel, but what if one who doesn't really care much for it and has to wade through every time...

Hi Steve,
There's nothing wrong with being in the minority, and your questions sparked some interesting views.
Keep the ideas coming...
@SeaNoEvil00

Well, guess I am part of the minority, too, because I find the app frustrating also. Aside from the issue of poor layout, the app will refuse to move through the channel selections with the one finger up/down gesture. It just makes a clunk noise. The only way I have found to get it working again is to do a hard reboot by holding the home button and power button at the same time.
I do like the idea of the app opening to the last channel that was used.

I like the picker. I think once you get used to how it works, it is very simple to use, and if you can remember where the channel you want to use is, you can easily swipe the appropriate number of times once the picker is in focus. One thing I haven't tried is doing a three-fingered swipe on the picker. Many times, that will cause the picker to jump by seven or eight items at a time, so if you get a longer and longer list of items, that might be a quick solution. Stephen, I'm curious if maybe because you are using an iPhone 6, maybe some of the features are not accessible? I am assuming you are using iOS11, so maybe the 6 is puttingsome limitations on you? I don't know if this is possible, but just wanted to throw that out there. Whatever happens, I wish you luck with the app.

With a tab UI the benefit would be that the user could quickly drag to the control. Presumably this would be faster than swiping through the picker. However, the disadvantage of the tab UI is that the user has to double-tap to select the control, whereas with the picker, no additional selection is required beyond swiping to the desired channel. Another disadvantage of a tab UI is that the screen real estate is limited.

If there were clear benefits to the tab UI, I'd support switching to it. But it seems to be a mixed bag, and the current picker plus 3D Touch already works, so changing to a new UI seems risky.

When I enable the color channel in Seeing AI and focus on an object, such as a solid color shirt, Seeing AI continues to blurt out various colors brown, blue, multicolor, black etc. I'm not moving the camera, just hovering over the shirt . Is it wanting me to pick out my favorite color or what?

Maybe the SeeingAI team can spend time on usability for all situations, minority or otherwise. Maybe tabs is a good solution despite the extra double tap. We could customize the tabs to show the oft used features with the rest delegated to a 'More'. I am sure a fine solution could be reached.

I don’t quite understand the problem you’re having with this. Do you have any problems flicking up/down to move to the previous or next rotor setting? You should be able to use exactly the same gesture for the picker. I wondered whether the tutorial screen that comes up the first time you select each channel might be confusing you (it confused me the first time I tried it) but if it’s a problem you’re having with pickers in general then perhaps not.

I can definitely see how adjusting the picker might be problematic with limited dexterity. Personally, I like the way the app works now, but as far as alternative suggestions for how this could be changed I can think of 3.

The first is what someone suggested with tabs, probably limited to 4, plus a "more" tab for all the stuff that doesn't fit on the tab bar, with an Edit button to rearrange what's displayed. This wouldn't be as fast as the picker, but channels would still be relatively quick to activate once you memorise the tab positioning, taking only 2 taps at most (1 to focus the tab and a double-tap to select it).

A second suggestion which I personally don't care much for is the Hamburger style menu that Google popularised. That is, a "Menu" button in the top left that opens a separate screen with all the channels listed vertically, plus the settings option could probably be moved here. The reason I don't care much for it is that these kind of menus just take too many taps to use, 1 tap to focus the menu button, a double-tap to open it, then another tap to focus the channel you want and finally a double-tap to actually switch to it.

My final suggestion is simply to turn the channels into pages, and keep the picker. So, just like on the home screen you can either change pages by finding the "page x of y" picker and swipe up/down on it, or just use 3-finger flicks left and right from anywhere to switch pages. The same thing could be done in seeing AI, keep the channel picker but also let you change channels by using the 3-finger left/right scrolling gestures.

As a consequence of NS, I have had to switch from being a right handed person to a lefty. Despite the loss of dexterity I find the picker straight forward to use. I'm using Seeing AI on an iPhone SE with no difficulty at all.
I agree with others who think that menus or tabs would make channel selection unnecassarily cumbersome.
Steven, it sounds like you might have to work on your picker skills a little.

at least since the latest version, the app does launch to the last channel used, so my only gribe with this app has been solved.

On my phone, the app always launches to Short Text, and does not appear to remember the last channel I used.

I am looking forward to the ability to edit the shortcut menu. I have been using the currency identifier instead of the LookTel app, and I would like to be able to put that in my short cut menu. Or, have it default as my last used channel.

Either way, this app is likely to replace a few apps on my phone in the near future.

First, I like the idea of the picker - A quick simple way to navigate through choices.

Unfortunately, as some others have reported, I am finding this interface buggy on my iPhone 6. Flicking up/down through the picker list doesn't seem to be reliable as it is with other apps. Also there are times when using VoiceOver with this app that buttons and items on the screen just won't talk. Sometimes all I will hear is a click. Sometimes closing the app and then reopening it will get speaking to start again.

Overall this is a great app with a simple and clean interface that is easy to navigate, it just needs to be a bit more robust when reading with VoiceOver.

--Pete

There are many ways they could go about making it better, and especially more managing when there are extra programs added.
They could have a window when the app opens to have you select your program, and when you need another tap a button to bring that window back, but this would add extra steps. Which isn't necessarily effective.
They could also try using something like a page scrolling gesture. Like a two or three finger swipe.
The tabs is another idea, but the more programs added the more clutter that tab bar will become.
This is a good idea, and if more programs are added this would be the smartest idea in my book. Use the twist gesture that is used like in the voiceover controls. Just keeps the app more clean.
Chuck

I like the use of the picker for changing channels, and find that it works well for me. The only thing that I would like is the ability to change the order of the channels that appear in the picker, as Anirudh mentioned. Also, maybe the ability to select or deselect the channels that are included. An interface for doing this similar to that found in the iOS Settings > General > Accessibility > VoiceOver > Rotor screen would be ideal.

I just wanted to drop in my 2 cents. I was previously unable to use the Seeing AI picker when I first started using it. I went bonkers trying to get that little guy to budge. I don't know if this is an actual issue or if I just got lucky, but when the rotor option was in anything other than character mode the picker didn't work very well or sometimes even at all, but once in character mode all works as described. What an amazing app!

Blaster

I like the third option from this post, to be able to do the three finger swipe either left or right to change channels. This would allow the app to have as many pages as needed, no matter how many channels may be added in the future. I also have no issues with the picker items.

I think what may be happening with your up and down flicks is that you're not doing it quickly enough, and the phone is inturpreting the flick as you dragging your finger. Do you have problems performing the right or left flicks? You’re up and down flicks should be like your left and right flicks, as if you were trying to flick a piece of dust off your screen. Hope this helps.

Thanks,
Shersey

I recently downloaded this app and like it a lot. I have a slight motor-coordination issue too, and it's taken me a bit of time to get used to all these iPhone gestures. Seeing AI doesn't seem to save the position for me either as far as which channel I'm on, but I'm comfortable now with the picker. The only issue I've had though with this app is getting my iPhone lined up correctly when attempting to scan a product. But I'm sure this will improve with practice. Thank you Microsoft for developing such a wonderful app, and I'm looking forward to future enhancements. I haven't yet explored 3d touch, but that is definitely on my list of things to do in the coming year.