unity-design team mailing list archive

[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.