JoostTeam

I think that one of the challenge Joost will face as more and more content is added is the overall UI inability to properly navigate it. Let me explain.

The current UI look cute and all but will not scale to large quantity of content. What Joost need is some major rework/rethinking of the UI. Here are a few issues with it:

• Currently there is no way to find out what is new since your last visit. To figure it out you need to endlessly navigate each channels to hope to spot the new program. This is a BIG issue.
• The way channels are listed in your channel list is also not scalable. I currently have 30 and it is painfully difficult to find the one I want to look at. Channels do not appear to be sorted an any way and there is now way to apply any sort of automated “sorting” to them. There should also be a way to type the first few letters of the channel name on the keyboard to either move to the 1st channel with a name starting like it or filter all channels that do not begin with it.
• Another thing Joost need is to provide date information about the shows within channels. I can’t remember the name of the channel containing the weekly MTV shows but right now there is no way to find out when a specific show was aired and which one is newer.
• Joost UI also need to be made “Living Room friendly” so I can use it from 15 feet away on my 40 inch LCD TV. Which bring the fact that I will want to do this from some hardware sitting under the TV and this will not be a PC. Maybe something like an Apple TV? So Joost need a TV appliance of their own or at least a partnership on that front.

The client application also has some limitations:

• Account configuration are local to each PC. I have multiple system and it is a pain to have to maintain each account in sync. Joost should store each subscribers account configuration on their back end. So as I watch and subscribe to channels it would be recorded centrally. When I then move to my system downstairs and start watching Joost I would find all the updates I made on my upstairs system.
• Joost also need to allow for multiple accounts on one system. Me, my wife and my child have different watching habits and should therefore be able ti individually tailor it to personal taste.

Joost should also offer a web based interface outside of Joost client to organize your content. I wish I could log into my account on joost.com from anywhere and modify my channel list using web 2.0 web interface. So if my living room system happen to not have a keyboard and a mouse I could still do configuration changes using a web browser on a separate system.

I could go on and on and on about what need improvement… but this gives you an idea. Let hope that all this can make it into 1.0… but I doubt it at this point.

What do you think Joost need to work on?

Link to discussion about this on Joost forum:

http://www.joost.com/forums/p/2007/04/joost-blog-post-dugg-to-front-page/