[Zubersoft]

I understand what you are saying, but we have to clearly define the logic that will be used to drive this. What exactly would I be looking for, and within what duration of time? I need to clearly differentiate between a user that is just happening to tap the center of the screen to turn the page versus performing some actions that seems to indicate that they are trying to get the overlay to come up. You said 8 attempts - so I would only show a message if the user tapped the middle of the screen 8 times in a row, but within what duration of time? Trying to figure out that a user is just confused versus just triggering features in the app is not a simple thing. In your response you said, "you know the page is being changed so the user is obviously not stuck" - if the user is tapping in the center of the screen anywhere, it's going to turn the page. How do I differentiate that from them being "stuck"? Touch actions still trigger in performance mode, so if they are tapping other parts of the screen, how do I differentiate that from them just trying to tap every part of the screen to get the overlay up? I know it sounds simple to say things like, "well if they trigger actions in four different parts of the screen within 5 seconds, they obviously must be confused", but writing the logic for that is messy and tedious. That means I have to check the duration between every tap, but only when performance mode is active, and also trigger what actions have been triggered within what duration of time to see if that means they are confused. If I don't get it right and someone is just tapping the "goto next song" action 5 times in a row, and I display the message, that's going to cause confusion. 

I'm definitely not trying to be difficult here - I recognize that something should be done because this is a recurring problem. I just don't want to muck up all the code trying to detect random gestures from a confused user when it's not going to be a surefire solution. The only thing I can think of is making things more tedious for my users who know what they are doing, i.e.

1) Turn performance mode off when the app is restarted
2) Display a message or other visual indicator every time any song is loaded with performance mode to ensure they know that performance mode is active
3) Always display a message about performance mode if the user activates multiple taps in the center of the screen within a certain duration

All of this still assumes that if I say to a user, "Performance mode is enabled" that they are going to know what that means. If I have to put a long message with a picture of the icon to tap, that's going to be quite obtrusive.

Thanks,
Mike