Posted by the Android crew
Deezer is a world music streaming platform that gives customers entry to over 110 million tracks. Deezer goals to make its utility simply accessible, letting customers hearken to their audio when, the place, and the way they need. With the rising reputation of Put on OS gadgets and massive screens and foldables, the Deezer crew noticed a chance to present its customers extra methods to stream by enhancing its multi-device help.
Rising sensible watch help
Over the previous few years, customers more and more requested Deezer to make its app accessible on Put on OS. Throughout this time, the Deezer crew had additionally seen fast development within the wearable market.
“The Put on OS market was rising because of the Fitbit acquisition by Google, the Pixel watch announcement, and the change to Put on OS on Galaxy watches,” stated Hugo Vignaux, a senior product supervisor at Deezer. “It was good timing as a result of Google raised the chance with us to spend money on Put on OS by becoming a member of the Media Expertise Program in 2022.”
Deezer’s builders initially targeted on offering instantaneous, quick access to customers’ personalised playlists from the applying. To do that, engineers streamlined the app’s Put on OS UI, making it simpler for customers to regulate the app from their wrist. Additionally they carried out a characteristic that allowed customers to obtain their favourite Deezer playlists straight to their smartwatches, making offline playback attainable with out requiring a cellphone or an web connection.
The Deezer crew relied on Google’s Horologist and its Media Toolkit throughout growth. Horologist and its libraries guided the crew and ensured updates to the UI adhered to Put on finest practices. It additionally made rolling out options like audio and bluetooth administration a lot simpler.
“The participant view supplied by the Media Toolkit was a supply of inspiration and assured that the app’s code high quality was as much as par,” stated Hugo. “It additionally allowed us to concentrate on unit testing and resiliency somewhat than growing new options from scratch.”
Extra help for giant screens and foldables
Earlier than updating the app, Deezer’s UX wasn’t totally optimized for giant screens and foldables. With this newest replace, Deezer builders created particular layouts for multitasking on massive screens, like tablets and laptops, and used resizable emulators to optimize the app’s resizing capabilities for every display screen on foldables.
“Supporting massive screens means we are able to higher match a number of home windows on a display screen,” stated Geoffrey Métais, engineering supervisor at Deezer. “This enables customers to simply change between apps, which is nice as a result of Deezer doesn’t require a consumer’s full consideration for them to utilize its UI.”
On tablets, Deezer builders cut up pages that had been displayed vertically to be displayed horizontally. Builders additionally carried out a navigation rail and turned some lists into grids. These easy quality-of-life updates improved UX by giving customers a better solution to click on by way of the app.
Making these modifications was simple for builders because of the Jetpack WindowManager library. “The WindowManager library made it easy to adapt our UI to totally different display screen sizes,” stated Geoffrey. “It leverages Jetpack Compose’s modularity to adapt to any display screen dimension. And Compose code stays easy and constant regardless of addressing quite a lot of totally different configurations.”
Updates to massive screens and foldables and Put on OS had been all created utilizing Jetpack Compose and Compose for Put on OS, respectively. With Jetpack Compose, Deezer builders had been capable of effectively create and implement a design system that targeted on technical points throughout the new app. The Deezer crew attributes their elevated productiveness with Compose to Composable capabilities, which lets builders reuse code segments, and Android Studio, which helps builders iterate on options quicker.
“The mixture of a correct Design System with Jetpack Compose’s modularity and reactive paradigms is a really sensible and environment friendly answer to enhance usability with out dropping growth productiveness,” stated Geoffrey.
The impression of elevated multi-device help
Rising multi-device help was simple for Deezer builders because of the instruments and sources supplied by Google. The updates the Deezer crew made throughout screens improved the app’s UI, making it simpler for customers to navigate the app and hearken to audio on their very own phrases.
Since updating for Put on OS and different Android gadgets, the Deezer crew noticed a 4X enhance in consumer engagement and acquired optimistic suggestions from its neighborhood.
“Creating for WearOS and throughout gadgets was nice because of the assistance of the Google crew and the provision of libraries and APIs that helped us ship some nice options, comparable to Horologist and its Media Toolkit. All these technical property had been very properly documented and the Google crew’s dedication was great,” stated Hugo.
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