Fixing the Usability of the Pause Button
The Pause button is broken. It’s broken because you resume exactly where you left off. As more audio and video becomes available via on-demand, the usability of the pause/resume button will become more important and will become a distinguishing feature among players.
For music, where you resume the song is not very critical. However, for longer content, such as video or podcasts, the pause/resume functionality is much more important. When you resume, you often lose key plot points and generally lose time rewinding the content.
Typically, you Pause a video or audio because you are interrupted – you are switching tasks. When you return to your movie, tv show, or podcast, it takes you a few moments to get back into the frame of mind when you left off. This is called the cost of task switching. As a result you often end up having to rewinding the stream a few seconds into the past and then restarting.
Here are 5 ways to enhance the usability of the Play/Pause button:
- Paused Video and Audio content should automatically resume a few moments in the past - not at the pause position.
- The amount of automatic time shifting should be proportional to the length of the content. For example, A short podcast, should backtrack a second or two while a TV show should resume 3-5 seconds in the past. Feature length films might rewind even up to 30 seconds to a minute.
- The nearest a scene change or audio lull should factor into the auto time-shifting calculation.
- If the content is played on a computer, the Pause point should be set to when the mouse starts moving before the paused button is pressed.
- If available, the reflex time should factor into the Pause point. (eg: the time between moving the mouse over the pause button and actually clicking the pause button)
Colin Bendell Boston, MA 
This is interesting but sounds a little over-engineered. You’re trying to predict the user’s intention and this could be a potential annoyance when the user is not doing what you think they are. Above all you should give the user control.
Have you seen things that have led you to want to improve the pause button? If so, what was it?
@David Hamill As a parent and commuter, my media consumption is constantly interrupted. The problem is that rewinding ‘enough’ often takes one or two tries before I get it right – regardless of the player. This resume problem exists on my dvd player, on my ipod, boxee, etc.
I find I only ever need to rewind about 3 seconds – that’s usually enough time for my brain to process and go “oh yea! that’s what was happening”. I was watching dexter tonight and had to pause a couple time, and when I resumed I was totally thrown for a loop. “Wait, what are they talking aobut? what’s this conversation? she’s in mid sentence, what was she saying?” etc. This only ever happens for video though – never for audio…. but, I don’t pay attention to audio in the same way I pay attention to video – but this is mostly because I can’t hear lyrics, so I don’t care what the dude’s singing about.
@ryan baldwin Point taken. I think might have been a little too agressive with my rewind times. I’ve update the post appropriately. I’ve also emphasized the point that this really isn’t an issue for music because, as you say, you don’t really care where in the song you resume from.