unity-design team mailing list archive

[Ian Santopietro <isantop@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 11/07/2011 04:25 PM, James Jenner wrote:
> On 8 November 2011 07:37, Ian Santopietro <isantop@xxxxxxxxx 
> <mailto: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).

That's one really nice thing about this. Assuming we have multiple 
handsets with our software, of course.

You can do pretty much everything in software (Even change the volume, 
though people have shown they like hardware volume buttons for that). 
That all said, since it's still Ubuntu, you could map pretty much 
anything to a hardware key. You could have a home button that reveals 
the launcher (Or the dash, either one). So there could be one phone with 
a physical home button for people who want one, and another phone for 
those who want a minimalist, button-less design.

> 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?

I haven't accounted for that in my concepts, but we could add a way to 
easily create custom lenses that the user could add their own apps or 
widgets to.

Specifically in regards to widgets, iOS has shown that users can be 
content without widgets. Possibly, we could allow developers to widgets 
to the notification drawer?

> 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.

I'm not sure what you mean by a "Key scenario". Can you explain?

> 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.

Thanks!

--
Ian Santopietro

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