I'm currently designing a custom full-screen video player for a client, who has provided an Adobe Illustrator high-fidelity interface mock-up. The concept is as minimalist as possible. Their mock-up (notably) lacks a volume control, showing only a play, separate pause, and seek/progress bar:
download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups
While they seem to have left the volume control out by accident, owing to the extremely minimalist design, I wonder if it's not actually a great idea:
- On my iPad (which a purported 70% of their target audience will be using), I would never use an inline player's volume control: I would just change the device's main volume with side buttons.
- On my desktop and laptop, I use the system volume keys on my keyboard to change volume.
In any event, I alter the system volume; the only time I ever alter an audio source's volume directly is when I'm programming, have music playing in the background and want it quieter than system alerts.
I am not the average user, but I don't expect my reactions to be so removed from normal as to break the interface.
The provided video content has sound, but is promotional in nature and never more than a few minutes. Since the video player is by design always full-viewport, I don't imagine many users will put the video on and return to another task, which is where altering the system volume would become problematic.
So, can I more or less safely do away with the inline volume control in this scenario?
As a compromise, could I add a mute button?
UPDATE: The client came back to us with a request to add 'the volume slider that they forgot'. Still, it was an interesting thought experiment.