unity-design team mailing list archive

[Eduard Grebe <eduardgrebe@xxxxxxxxx>]

This is certainly an interesting set of ideas worth thinking about. I'm
not sure mouse-based gestures would work well, however: I suspect they
would be very cumbersome compared to direct button clicks.

Nevertheless, I think this concept can be further developed as a
touch-centric UI element. (Obviously gestures work very well on touch
screens.) One of the huge UI challenges is intermediate-sized devices
with touchscreens (e.g. tablets, large phones and netbooks with
touchscreens). While the iPhone software and Android have done well to
design touch-oriented UIs that work well in phones and for simple tasks
like web-browsing on a larger device, I think devices that have more
desktop-like functionality will be very difficult to interact with using
such a UI. On the other hand, pure desktop UIs are not suited to
finger-interaction.

I think an important opportunity for Ubuntu lies in developing form
factor-agnostic UI concepts that allows variations of a single look and
feel to work on a variety of device shapes and sizes (much like UNE
differs from the standard Ubuntu experience, but still seems familiar to
an Ubuntu user).

(Note, I also think a speech-to-text engine and framework built into the
standard Ubuntu would be huge strength on smaller devices. I don't know
whether Google's work on Android is part of the open source project, but
if it is, it might be worth while looking at it.)

Sorry about my long and possibly uninteresting rant.

Eduard

On Fri, 2010-03-26 at 06:18 +0000, Mark Shuttleworth wrote:
> Hi folks
> 
> Got this interesting proposal from Pablo, and thought it should be
> sent to the list rather than handled in private correspondence. It
> reminds me of something David Siegel was sketching out, also inspired
> by the challenge of "how we can make the most of the new space".
> 
> Pablo, if you're not subscribed to Ayatana, it's the best place to
> sketch out a proposal like this.
> 
> I appreciate both the detail in the proposal and the relaxed way it's
> pitched!
> 
> Mark
> 
> -------- Original Message -------- 
>                           Subject: 
> Proposal of new UI element for
> windows in Ubuntu: Esfera
>                              Date: 
> Fri, 26 Mar 2010 00:42:45 +0100
>                              From: 
> Pablo Quirós <mr.polmac@xxxxxxxxx>
>                                To: 
> mark@xxxxxxxxxx
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Hello Mark, I've got a proposal on the buttons' subject. It is a new
> element to be placed in the free space on the top-right of the
> windows. 
> 
> 
> At first I wasn't very convinced on the UI change, and we exchanged a
> couple of messages on the matter in the related bug report, but I've
> thought about it and I agree with you that this could bring
> interesting possibilities.
> 
> 
> I've designed a concept called Esfera, which I think could be a huge
> step forward to the user experience, while bringing innovation to the
> Ubuntu desktop. The idea is explained in the attached PDF; I hope you
> can take the time to read it or at least send it to the Canonical
> Design team. Sorry for the mockup; I'm a disaster using GIMP, but I
> hope it illustrates the idea.
> 
> 
> I'd be very pleased to answer any question you may have about it. I'd
> just request that if you implement the idea, I appear somewhere as the
> author of the concept, and I've be glad if you kept the name I've
> chosen.
> 
> 
> Of course, there are lots of ideas that go nowhere, so I'd perfectly
> understand if you consider it useless -- just thought it was good and
> wanted to share it with you.
> 
> 
> Regards,
> 
> 
> Pablo Quirós
> 
> 
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