Task Launcher - mockups

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Wednesday 30 January 2013 08:51:09 Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> On Tuesday, January 29, 2013 21:45:18 Marco Martin wrote:
> > On Tuesday 29 January 2013, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> > > pros:
> > > * it means every new thing created will be associated with that activity
> > > by
> > > default
> > > * it means i don't have to have to pull down the launch and start a
> > > different app to get to this functionality
> > > 
> > > as a wild thought: would it work at all to have a "create" button
> > > between
> > > "+" and "configure"?
> > 
> > hm, another button would probably be quite redundant, and not very clear
> > the difference...
> 
> yes, i struggled with that as well.
> 
> > I think i would prefer starting this kind of actions from the top menu,
> > that doesn't *have* to be the list of all applications as now btw.
> > It may even have just icons to browsers (files, books, web, images..) and
> > a
> > launcher for the start task ui (applications that can't really be melted
> > in
> > a task, such as games may be listed in a "category" of tasks)
> 
> this got me to thinking if we could make even more use of the Launch area.
> it's where you "start" stuff, so "starting something new" makes sense up
> there ... but perhaps instead of starting a new application (making it also
> feel heavy in a different way), if selecting a "create" entry could cause
> the launch icons to slide away and be replaced by the options of things you
> can create. iow, integrate the "create" interface into the Launch.
> 
> i also like the idea (if i read your email properly anyways ;) of providing
> a clearer visual separation between content browsers and other
> applications.
> 
> if we were to go that route, when we get to creating the "create"
> application, it may be a nice opportunity to revisit the Launch area and
> see if there are any small (non-complexity-increasing :) improvements we
> can make there.
> 
> the more i think about having "create" in the Launch area, the more i like
> it, btw :) it feels .. like the right place.

I know it's easy to say that now ex post facto, but I imagined putting a task 
starting interface in the Launch area at a later point all along (as I 
mentioned in the thread-starter mail, my idea would only have worked for file 
creation tasks anyway), and your ideas made me come up with something even 
more radical: Why not turn the whole Launch area into a task-starter? I love 
the idea of a task description grammar Aaron brought up in our last meeting, 
so I thought "Why not turning all launchers into actions?"

Attached you'll see my idea for a new task-centric Launch area, in which 
everything is a task, and the categories are verbs (see "select task.png"). 
Each list would be flickable vertically (I know, this conflicts with flicking the 
whole Launch up, but I don't think this would be too much of a problem since I 
guess users are more likely to flick from from the Peek or Top Bar anyway). If 
there are more categories than fit on the screen, the categories could be 
scrolled horizontally. 

The idea is that if a task involves more than one step to specify or is 
actually a group of tasks (the ones with the ellipses at the end), after it is 
tapped the whole area morphs into the column design of the Add Ons store (see 
"specify task.png") with one column for each step (hat tip to Marco for that 
idea). Ideally we would always stay in the sentence construction metaphor, but 
I'm not sure if it works (I was too lazy to try fitting my example tasks into 
this scheme).

Directly starting with the column layout would make the whole thing more 
consistent (and easier to implement), but I think it would be annoying to 
insert another category selection step into one-step tasks, so I'd prefer 
making better use of available screenspace by displaying several categories in 
the first step.

Of course there can be more than one task associated to an application, 
possibly even in different categories (e.g. "Browse calendar", "Create event" 
and "Manage calendars" are all accomplished using Calendar).

I think this approach would reflect our move from app-centric to task-centric 
design in a very consequent way and therefore I'd strongly prefer it over a 
mix of task and classical application launchers. Plus, it would fit the name 
"Plasma Active" well, because you select actions, not names.

Final remark: I don't think this should be the only point to start a task 
from. Users should should be able to  start a task from wherever it makes 
sense, for example starting a contact-related task from a contact's context 
menu. And that's why I thought it might make sense to also add starters for 
file creation tasks to the Add Items dialog.
If that feels too wrong for you guys, I think I'd be fine with limiting file 
creation to the main task launcher, though.

I'm very curious what you think about this approach, so comment away! :)

Cheers,
Thomas
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: select task.png
Type: image/png
Size: 45614 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/active/attachments/20130130/b192efa5/attachment-0002.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: specify task.png
Type: image/png
Size: 48365 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/active/attachments/20130130/b192efa5/attachment-0003.png>