With the coming release of the 2nd Gen Zunes and the new Zune software, the Zune team decided to introduce a new rating system for our media. Gone is the 5 Star system we all have used for eons in just about everything that has a ratings system. Now we get a Heart system. How nice. Basically, 'Love It' (full heart) or Hate It' (broken heart). So, basically if you have any smart playlists that remove songs you rate with a 1 star or maybe sync only 4-5 star songs. Forget about it. Once you update the software, the new system will convert all your star ratings to the new heart system. A 1-2 star will be a 'Hate It' and 3-5 stars will be 'Love It'. Apparently, focus groups of Hello Kitty lovers helped with this decision. Here's what Cesar posted about the issue over on
ZuneInsider.com:Now for the backstory: I spoke with some folks on the design/dev team about this and picked up some of the reasoning and thinking behind the new rating system. Last year, we extensively tested the 0-5 star rating system with users – both on the current system and their potential usage - and learned a few interesting things. First, there was a great degree of confusion between different ratings for different users – e.g. a 3 star rating for one user might mean “I love this song” but for another user, it could mean “this song is just ok.” And when we asked users if they would rate content using the existing system, 90% said that they wouldn’t. So we had to figure out a way to implement a rating system that users both understood and would be likely to use. We tested several different variations, and in the end users gravitated towards the heart/broken heart system, as it put track ratings into more human terms. Hence, the new rating system.
Come on. If it's about 'more human terms', then just change the stars into hearts so our simple minded folks can get it. Really, how hard was the old system to understand? Who are these people in these focus groups? Are they over 12 yrs old? I just find it totally nuts that MS would take a highly functional rating system and turn it into something that is only useful for people with an IQ of 20. Here's an idea, allow us to choose a rating system. 'Novice' or 'Advanced'. This would keep everyone happy and allow the 'novice' folk to step up to a real system when their brains can handle it.
I
was looking forward to the new software. Not so much now.
