Plasma Mobile Design (a new attempt)

[Martin Klapetek]

On Tue, Sep 1, 2015 at 6:52 AM, Jens Reuterberg <jens at ohyran.se> wrote:

> Ok so there has been a proposal for a set of Plasma Mobile HIG's and
> designs.
> It was sent out a while back (or so I thought because something must have
> gone
> weird with my email)... either way here it is again.
>
> The work has been done by Alex L and Andrea del Sarto (VDG's two new core
> members and phone wizards) and is very much a work in progress and one of
> the
> many ideas so far. There are too many focus issues to be hammered out
> still so
> remember that all this is very much something that should be taken lightly
> for
> now.
>

So I'm not sure if I should be commenting on it or not, but here's my take
on it. I really like the menus exported to panels idea. Ideally QML can do
this for us for free already just like the QWidget apps work (I dunno).

The task manager - I'm not entirely convinced on the idea of when you pull
it up half-way, it stays pulled up half-way. I think that swiping from the
bottom edge should just show the panel big enough that you can tap on it
without needing another zoom, but if you keep swiping from bottom, it would
switch to the previews at full. So basically three states - panel hidden,
panel
pulled up with normal zoom and panel morphed into previews with the panel
shrinking down if you pull up too much but not enough to trigger the
previews
threshold.

Different side swiping down - at this point I already feel the edge swiping
navigation is so overwhelming that I'm afraid to use it cause it's just too
much gestures to learn and remember. This point I'd personally just be
happy to leave out. Fwiw, my current phone offers so many swipe gestures
that lots of time I'm just starring at the screen and feel lost. I'd like
to avoid
that with Plasma.

The screens grid - I feel like that introduces more unnecessary complexity,
both for the user and the code. Given how long Android and iOS are out
and given what they offer, I think they kidna nailed it already and we can
just learn from them. Adding complexity into this simple thing just because
we can doesn't seem right. Letting the user create a maze out of their home
screens...I just don't see the need *shrug*. Remember, too many options
make users unhappy :P


> What we need is input from you guys (the people who belong to the "dev"
> side
> of things) - we need to look at a certain set of requirements for Apps to
> be
> able to hammer out a design.
>
> 1) We need the apps to respect "bottom and top edges are reserved for the
> OS/Shell"
> 2) We need the apps to handle certain common features the same way
> (hamburger
> menu, yay or nay)
> 3) We need to see the apps as the main subject instead of something that
> should be ticked off a list.
>
> The last one is my personal thing - instead of thinking something like "Oh
> Plasma Mobile need a mail app" it should be "What would be a killer app in
> Android?" - IE think of an app that would beat other email apps on any
> ecosystem instead of just a box to tick for Plasma Mobile.
> It should be an app which so redefine what such an app is that we could
> port it
> to Android and iOS and make it more popular than the once already
> available.
> It should be something in and off itself unique, not unique because Plasma
> Mobile doesn't have that kind off app - but rethinking the way we see
> applications.
>

Yes to this.

Cheers
-- 
Martin Klapetek | KDE Developer
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