The article says "If there is a piece of information about a podcast that is the least useful, that would be the cover art."
I think that's not true. Cover art / album art allows you to visually scan through a pile of different podcasts to find the one podcast you're looking for. E.g. "I know it's mostly purple with a little white, so now I'm scanning for purple… there it is." You can find the one you want even if the art is tiny and you can see 100 at a time.
Let's not allow the lesson to be "text is better, don't display cover art". Instead, let's allow the lesson to be "let me make the software work the way my brain does." It's not that Spotify has made a terrible decision, necessarily. It's just that their UI isn't optimized for a non-visual person, or a person who prefers text to images.
What if software had far more customizable UI, such that I can make the software display the information to me in the way that makes the most sense to me? Harder to test, for sure, but if they made it a paid feature (meaning only for paying users) it might pay for itself.
I think that's not true. Cover art / album art allows you to visually scan through a pile of different podcasts to find the one podcast you're looking for. E.g. "I know it's mostly purple with a little white, so now I'm scanning for purple… there it is." You can find the one you want even if the art is tiny and you can see 100 at a time.
Let's not allow the lesson to be "text is better, don't display cover art". Instead, let's allow the lesson to be "let me make the software work the way my brain does." It's not that Spotify has made a terrible decision, necessarily. It's just that their UI isn't optimized for a non-visual person, or a person who prefers text to images.
What if software had far more customizable UI, such that I can make the software display the information to me in the way that makes the most sense to me? Harder to test, for sure, but if they made it a paid feature (meaning only for paying users) it might pay for itself.