Task Launcher - mockups

[Marco Martin]

On Thursday 31 January 2013, Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> > still not wholely formed, but maybe edging somewhere useful.
> 
> Well, I see that we have to take this discussion one step back.
> Both you and Marco mainly criticized my idea of a UI solution, which is
> fine and generally useful, but isn't what I really had intended. Again:
> The UI is merely an implementation detail.
> 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

about this (to go a while in devil's advocate mode), there is one thing i'm a 
bit concerned of which i couldn't think about a solution yet (it all depends 
on how things are done in the end i guess)

the big great advantage of a paradigm based on "apps" is the virtually 
infinite scalability of the process.
takes little time for developers to pick up the platform and start to develop.
also, scales in the sense that being an application something quite isolated 
that just a couple of developers can work on, is easy to have, say 1000 
developers working to produce software on it, without significant coordination 
problems.

now, is this the best thing for the user? surely not, indeed the results tend 
to be an uncoordinated mess, but it works in the sense is something that can 
actually be delivered.


Now, the risk i see in a deeply integrated system, is a great difficulty of 
coordination, and a very steep learning curve for 3rd parties, having 
something that looks like a single big application that tries to catch 
everyrhing, without being really efficient in any particular task, and with 
the risk of not being possible to model some task we completely didn't hink 
about.

Also it shouldn't feel like something that gives the impression of forcing the 
user to "compile a bureaucratic form" before being allowed to do something, 
i'm usually very suspicious to any design that "adds" ui, instead of removing 
it.

in the end, is important for me that anything we design is not something that 
is heavier (as resources), feels heavier (as user experience) and feels 
hostile for 3rd party developers.
I believe is possible to design something that is nothing o the above, we just 
have to constantly keep in mind that

Cheers,
Marco Martin