Re: [Ayatana] What should Unity look like on Smartphones and Tablets?

[James Jenner <james.g.jenner@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 8 November 2011 07:37, Ian Santopietro <isantop@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

At UDS-P, Mark announced his plans to have Ubuntu on Tablets, phones,
and TVs by 14.04 LTS. You can start too early!

http://i.imgur.com/56vDn.jpg

I'd like feedback from the Ayatana community on the design. Is there
anything that should be changed, or added? Possibly removed? Is there
anything that isn't clear?

First up, I would like to say that you have produced some nice prototypes. 

Interesting application of unity for a smaller footprint. I'm presuming that multi tasking is available in some flavour because you wish to show running applications, however I cannot see an easy way to close running apps. Would this be via a hardware button (a la the iphone button), via software buttons (a la later versions of android) or via some other mechanism? 

I'm not keen on the idea of a swipe from the side to show the launch panel while in a new app. To me it should be simpler and more obvious. The iphone approach is the simplest, not obvious, but very easy to learn and remember, however requires hardware to support it. The android approach in application navigation is a negative edcept for the home button, which is really the same as the iphone, just software based now (well in the latest version).

I'm not a big fan of the dash being the 'home' or 'default' screen. People love being able to place/arrange their shortcuts for their apps. To me this should be extended to include documents, etc. However with the dash open as the default home, people will not have this option. I've not read any studies but I would imagine people generally access specific applications in high frequency, which would make sense to have these apps available immediately and not require multiple clicks to find. This would include an option for address book, option for making a call, option for sms, etc (for the phone one at least, maybe video conf for tablet and possibly phone options as well).

People who use android love their widgets/gadgets, is there a plan to support such a thing for unity?

My main concern is that Unity will be shoved into the phone/tablet arena. In my mind there should be development of key scenarios, use cases, etc. A road map would be a good idea as well. Then when mockups are presented then they can be compared against the key scenarios and use cases to make sure they're suitable, or if they require tweeking.

Just my thoughts, don't take it as a neg to your work, I think you did a brilliant job of taking the current Unity and applying it to the phone/tablet form factor.