Task-centric UI (was: Calligra Active's main screen)

[Björn Balazs]

Hi all,

I just joined this ML after the kind invitation from 
Thomas. As he mentioned I will not be very active on this 
list - but I will try to follow anything that picks up 
the topic of task centric design, which I think is an 
extremely interesting topic, esp. for Free Software.

For those who do not know me: I am one of the founders of 
OpenUsabilty.org (and currently trying to re-animate it 
again). For a living I run a small consultancy named 
'user prompt', where we help our customers with our 
psychologic IT expertise to work better together with 
their users.

For KDE I do / did little bits and pieces here and there 
- I have been in the Kontact Touch team and visited some 
sprints, ran some icon tests,...

Looking forward to interesting discussions with you!

Cheers,
Björn

Am Montag, 8. Oktober 2012, 14:58:41 schrieb Thomas 
Pfeiffer:
> On 08.10.2012 11:23, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> > On Monday, October 8, 2012 11:07:12 Marco Martin 
wrote:
> >> I think that is mostly a design problem, the two 
things are not really
> >> against each other, in the end apps should either 
reuse the file browser
> >> as
> >> a component (still figuring out how to do that) or 
be able to provide
> >> custom components (and artwork) for the file browser 
when browsing the
> >> files of type x.
> > 
> > very good points we need to work out in more detail.
> > 
> > my suggestion is that we table these discussions for 
the next release. the
> > file browser is a great start, and i think we polish 
up the existing
> > feature set in a number of ways. but let's focus 
right now on getting
> > this out as it is ..
> Absolutely! I didn't want to bother you guys with this 
before the release,
> but since it's on the table now anyway:
> I've already thought about application integration as a 
future topic a bit.
> What came to my mind was Björn Balasz' presentation at 
the KDE UX sprint
> April 2011 about task-centered interfaces. The general 
idea current
> application-centric desktop shells are not really 
compatible with users'
> mental models. A user doesn't think "I want to start 
Kmail touch", but
> instead "I want to write an email to Grandma". However 
currently she first
> has to think "Okay, what application do I have to start 
to write an
> email?".
> The task-centered approach focuses on tasks and views 
applications only as
> tools for those tasks and does not bother users with 
them.
> By intentionally pushing Okular Active as an 
application to the background
> and just letting users open their PDFs and ebooks 
without having to care
> about which application is used to display them, we 
already did the first
> step in that direction.
> However, the approach goes far beyond that, as a more 
complex task workflow
> can also transition seamlessly between different 
"applications", and this
> is where it gets really exciting and this is where Free 
Software, with its
> collaborative nature, can really shine!
> I already asked Björn if he wanted to work with us on 
this and even though
> he currently does not have enough time to work on 
detailed designs, he
> agreed to join us in general discussions while we bring 
his ideas to life.
> 
> Marco's points are important to consider in this 
discussion, and I think we
> can create something pretty revolutionary here which 
only a Free Software
> community is capable of. At the UX sprint we started 
thinking about
> "Lego-like" systems, where each "application" becomes 
an exchangeable
> component in a task workflow.
> 
> After the release we should start thinking about the 
big picture here,
> together with Björn.
> 
>  > it's already pretty sexy; hard to believe it's a 
"1.0" application.
> 
> Absolutely. I'm glad that Marco is such a talented UI 
designer/developer,
> and I'm glad that I kept pushing him to improve in the 
details (such as
> drag & drop visibility or tag representation). Marco, 
it's always a
> pleasure working with you ;)
> 
> Thomas
-- 
Dipl.-Psych. Björn Balazs
Business Management & Research
T +49 30 6098548-21 | M +49 179 4541949

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Björn Balazs