Task Launcher - mockups

Thu Jan 31 11:04:43 UTC 2013

On Thursday, January 31, 2013 11:30:19 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> and generally useful, but isn't what I really had intended. Again: The UI
> is merely an implementation detail.

well, post-concept it becomes the design focus .. which is why marco and i 
tend to spend so much time talking about it ;)

> What we have to decide is: Do we dare the big paradigm shift? Do we want to
> replace "Plasma Media Center" (with its functions to play music and play
> videos) with "Play Videos" / "Play Music", and "Calendar" with the functions
> to view and manage calendars and create events with "Browse Calendar",
> "Manage Calendars" and "Create Event", "Marble" with "Browse/View/Navigate
> Maps"? 

personally, i'm in favour of exploring this further ..  :)

we've already started down this line with Books and Images. having Videos and 
Music in there which launch PMC directly showing those is a natural next step. 
the user should never "launch" PMC but rather go to viewing content (either 
browsing what is available or opening a specific item).

Calendars is interesting .. "Browse Calendar" is, following the above pattern 
in which "the verb 'view' is implied in the noun form" this would then appear 
as just Calendars. creating an event would appear in Create. "create event" 
should also be available from inside the calendar app as well, so once you are 
there you aren't repeatedly going back to the Create UI .. in this way a 
calendar is different from, say, writing text documents, as adding an event is 
a form of editting the calendar being viewed. so Calendars an exception; 
Calligra Words should not offer the ability to create new documents.

another interesting one are applications like KAlgebra. it isn't realy 
consumption -> you use it to, e.g., show graphs for equations you type in. is 
that creation? if so, would it then appear in in Create -> Algebra? "graph" 
would give the wrong impression. it's also not quite creation as much as it is 
exploration, learning ... is that a new verbal category? if so, what is it? 
you can use KAlgebra to learn .. but you can also use it to get useful graphs 
for equations that may come up in the course of a real world project you are 
working on. 

Marble is easys: it would just be Maps, the same as PMC is Videos (if Marble 
makes some leaps forward in the future, it could become Locations)

manage .. this is an extension of the settings concept we currently have? so i 
wonder if we could treat this similarly in the UI as Create (i know you don't 
want to talk UI, but i need to figure out how this idea will impact the next 
step of design before knowing if it is something we can realistically commit 
to :) .. there could be a single Settings entry which when selected replaces 
the launch view with setting options. this would mean we don't need a settings 
application anymore, either. just the individual panels.

if we realy wanted to take it even further, settings could appear IN the 
Launch area as well. 'm not sure how i feel about that idea yet at all, but it 
could enhance the feeling that settings are a part of the system itself and 
make accessing such settings a little faster -> you don't end up with a window 
that opens that you then have close to get back.

a big question here probably is whether or not one jumps between different 
settings options a lot. e.g. do i open settings to access a specific settings 
page, or do i open settings and visit several? if the former, it doesn't 
matter if the settings pages remain integrated .. if the latter, it's probably 
an efficiency boost to keep them in the same UI as the listing of settings 
pages.

and IF we put the settings page listings .. er .. the Manage options ;) in the 
Launch area, then we'll need to explore if we need a listing that shows more 
detail per entry. in the Settings app it shows an icon, a name and a 
description. so: is the description useful?

lots of questions waterfall from here.

to back up a bit .. if it is all in the Launch area, then we have:

Create -> things you can create -> workflow selection
Manage (Settings?) -> settings page listings -> settings page
Consumption -> Entries that are nouns which can be prefaced with "view" (view 
maps, view web site, view files, view books, view videos, ..)

consumption items could stay in the top level as a full list (they are already 
"complete sentences") with Create and Manage unfolding to show the options 
within those items (to build a sentence/phrase)

> Just adding a global "Create" button to a grid of application
> launchers is only a tiny shift from app-centric to task-centric. Do we want

> And in
> the first case: Where do we place all the other tasks that have nothing to
> do with creating things?

i think we leave them in the top level, listed after Create and 
Manage/Settings. taken further, we could have: Create (single entry that 
unfolds to show creation possibilities), Manage/Settings (single entry that 
unfolds to show management possibilities), media consumers (single entries, 
all top level) and then non-media consumption items (e.g. games :)

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
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