Task-Centric file creation - First mockups

[Inge Wallin]

On Tuesday, January 29, 2013 21:01:07 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> as suggested by notmart, I fired up Pencil ( http://pencil.evolus.vn/ ) to
> draw a mockup of my first ideas for a task-centric UI. Since that is what
> we need most urgently, I started with a way to initiate file-creation
> tasks. Following Shantanu's idea that the Add Items dialog would be a good
> place to create new files (if a user creates a new file in PA, she is most
> likely to do so in the context of an Activity) and considering Marco's
> concern that the Add Items dialog is already pretty crowded with elements,
> I thought "Why not putting new files on the same level as existing files?
> From a user's perspective, why should the process be any different?"
> So as you can see in "Add Items Dialog With New Files.png", I've just
> inserted the different kinds of new documents into the list of files. If
> the user selects one of them and taps "Add Items", the Add Items dialog is
> replaced by the "New Text Document Dialog". This dialog lists the
> available tasks involving the creation of text documents. Tapping one of
> the tasks starts it.
> The tasks I put in there may not be very good examples since there are
> better entry points for them (like a contact or an event), but those were
> already discussed in our two meetings so they came to my mind first ;)
> I don't know if it's technically feasible to merge the "New XXX" icons with
> the list of existing files, I just did what I felt made sense form a user's
> perspective.
> 
> I've also attached the Pencil file in case somebody would like to modify it
> (if your Oxygen icons are located in /usr/share/icons/oxygen, they should
> be found.
> 
> So, as always: Feedback welcome!
> 
> Cheers,
> Thomas

This is very interesting.  I don't have much feedback but I just want to raise 
one issue that creating new stuff (documents in my case) need to take into 
account: templates.  Sometimes you want to create a new completely empty 
document. Sometimes you want to create something from an existing template.  

Sometimes you even want to create a new document from an old one but that is 
another matter. Just don't forget templates when you design the interaction.

	-Inge