Aza Raskin demos a nice, simple concept for Firefox Mobile. My favorite quote: “Trying to type on mobile is like trying to remove a contact lens with a cotton ball; it’s just not fun.” It looks like a strong concept, though I’m not sure of the value of the ‘tab’ space like he describes – I don’t believe that user-organised zoom spaces on mobile are better than system-organised ones.
Link: Firefox Mobile concept video (azarask.in)
Cool stuff.
“I wanted to try to take advantage of spatial reasoning and spatial memory to make it easier to find and navigate stuff. Let the user see the scope of information available. Start by showing the big picture. When it makes sense, let it behave more like real-world objects. You can normally pick up objects where you left them off. They don’t move when you are not watching, something digital objects often do. (Insert your favorite joke about spouse here.) Over the last couple hundred thousand years our brains has developed a fantastic ability to take in and store where stuff is in our immediate surroundings. Since mobile screens are a part of our immediate surroundings, we should try to take advantage of this ability. It might sometimes make user interfaces a bit less confusing.”
Link: Flat Music Player version 2 (sender11.typepad.com)
Marek Pawlowski discusses some of the UI paradigm shift that’s happening with more capable handsets and greater function sets.
“ZenZui’s approach, where users navigate objects themselves, as opposed to lists and icons describing objects, is part of a growing trend in mobile interface design. It is being driven by an an increase in processing power and storage space, enabling users to create and store much richer media on their handsets. It is now not only desirable but technologically feasible to make media objects part of the interface rather than a layer beneath it…Removing the layers between the user and the objects or tasks they want to complete on their mobile device is a logical step. Why should the interface be a passive, structured layer funnelling the user through a process flow?”
Link: Evolving from lists to objects: a story of ZenZui, TAT and Apple (mobileuserexperience.com)
Published by Gabriel White.