The audio player is simple and basic now and perhaps additional features or improvements are already being planned but I would suggest the following based on observing users and my desire for certain functionality/appearance. Maybe some of these could be added as configurable options within the app builder to make the audio player somewhat customizable.
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Numerals in audio player match the choice of numeral system at the book/book collection level. Currently the numerals in the audio player are just the default “western” numerals.
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Allow the audio player to appear in a Right to Left direction similar to how WhatsApp audio messages appear in a RTL direction when the device language is RTL. This would involve switching the order of the time elapsed and total time as well as the direction of the play arrow. (This is different but related to my feature suggestion of having the app level direction appear RTL based on the user’s device language.)
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Make the audio player slightly larger or at least make it customizable. Youversion’s audio player is an example but theirs fills most of the screen when you bring up the audio player so that may be an extreme. But making the audio player larger would help to emphasize the audio aspect of the app but also move the play button away from the time slider. (see my next point)
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Move the play button either further away from or to the side of the time slider (to the side would be similar to WhatsApp’s audio message player). I’ve observed a user accidentally causing the audio to jump to a different location because when they went to pause the audio, their finger accidentally touched the time slider before/instead of the play button, which causes disruption to the group as they need to figure out where they were in the audio. This could happen on smaller phones, phones without a good touchscreen, or just because of lazy/imprecise fingers. (We have built some questions for discussion into audio bible studies so the users are asked to pause/play many times in a 10 minute recording).
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As the feature to share audio is implemented in the coming releases, it would be nice to have a traditional “Share” icon located directly in the audio player to help emphasize to the user that the audio can be shared, especially if the general Share feature is buried under the menu button.