I’ve been throwing this concept back and forth for about 6 months now, thinking if I should just publish it or try to develop it further before publishing. Well, since I don’t have the proper resources nor the time to develop it further at this point, maybe it’s just easier to publish it. So here we go, natural zooming for digital displays:
You know how you look n picture and there is n detail you want to see, like the subjects face? You squint your eyes and maybe look closer to the picture. How about harnessing this natural habit to user interface? And why hasn’t no-one done that yet?
Here is the basic idea in rough scetch:
Read on.
Continue reading “Enhancing natural behaviour – Natural zooming, anyone?”
Garmin finally came through with their Nuvifone handheld. The UI, at first sight, looks ok, but it’s nothing too spectacular; The home screen (seen here) looks nice, as does the (iPhone inspired) keyboard, that however is about it. The rest of the UI uses rather crappy icons and confusing array of different control methods; you got your scrolling lists, side tabs, buttons, couple of different lists, even tad weird side-by-side lists.
Two more pictures after the jump
Head to Laptop Magazine to check out the rest of the pictures
Continue reading “Garmin Nuvifone fondled, killer UI it is not”
As Firefox is heading towards mobile space it’s pretty obvious that the user interface, which is designed for mouse driven computer screens really can’t handle today’s touch-screens and whatnots.
The initial impression is that this really looks nice as far as user interfaces go. However, if you want to go heuristic on this, in the light of usability, the lack of visual clues in the default view might become a problem. However, if proper tutorial/tips are provided this shouldn’t become a problem.
Also I’m not sure if, in the end, I like the drag controls. Sure, it’s nice with such small pages but what if the user navigates to a page which is far wider than the mobile screen can handle? After all, such pages are hardly uncommon in the internet.
Not to mention the user interface has two completely different operations in the same direction drag (drag to right/reveal left – either browser controls or back to all tabs view), only the length of the drag defines what happens. However, with proper execution and clues I think this could be handled;
50% screen (or less) drag/reveal = browser controls
90% screen drag/reveal = back to all tabs view
This way user could rely on muscle memory when using the interface, thus using it faster and more reliable, instead of conclusions based solely on visually observations.
Video after the jump.
Read: Aza Raskin’s blog or Mozilla Labs blog
Continue reading “Firefox mobile gets concept user interface”
