some feedback from a mobile application development team

[Dirk Hohndel]

Hi Thomas

On Wed, Jan 06, 2016 at 02:56:09AM +0100, Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
                        ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You clearly have interesting working hours... just like Sebastian

> There is a difference between edge swipe and regular horizontal swipes. All 
> stock Android apps that have a left drawer use an edge swipe to open it (in 
> addition to the button), but still happily use horizontal swipes to navigate 
> e.g. between emails without conflict.

Wow. I did not realize that. Just tried it and indeed, you are right.
No conflict, no issue. Cool.

I learned something new today :-)

> > What do you think about this solution instead:
> > - on Android, draw the two hard to reach corner menu buttons
> > - on any OS, show the FAB with the arrows
> 
> We could do that, yes.

I think that would really help. Especially in the beginning - until Plasma
Mobile takes over the world and everyone is used to this behavior and is
wondering why there are apps that don't use the Action Button in the lower
center...

Just promise that you don't go BMW iDrive on us and allow eight different
directions for the Action Button :-)

> > AND
> > 
> > Support a "first start" mode for Plasma Mobile Components based apps that
> > demonstrates to the user how things get used. So it shows a see through
> > finger that taps and holds (the pulsing circles around the touch area) the
> > FAB and moves it and the menus show up, and then shows that you could also
> > tap the menu buttons when on Android. It would be nice to have this "first
> > start" mode supported by the tool kit so that not every single app has to
> > implement something along those lines.
> 
> You caught us here: Actually, this was our idea all along, we just haven't 
> gotten around to design and implement them, yet. My usability tests so far 
> also clearly show that this interaction needs a quick introduction. Once I 
> showed users how it worked, they found it easy to interact with, so yes, we 
> need those tutorials and will provide them.

Cool

> And I also agree that this should be provided by the framework. In Plasma 
> Mobile, the tutorial would come up directly on the first start of a new device. 
> On Android, it should ideally be shown only the first time that any application 
> using our components is used.

Not sure how that could be handled on Android, but I'll burn that bridge
when I get there.

> > > So, what do you think?
> > 
> > I tried to show my thinking above. In summary I'm supportive of introducing
> > the FAB as an easy to reach way to get to the drawers, as long as it's in
> > addition to the  traditional ways to do so.
> 
> This might indeed be a good compromise indeed.

Great.

> > I'm not a fan of side swiping for the drawers because that prohibits what
> > I find more intuitive and more useful application of the side swipe gesture.
> 
> I'd really like you to try out whether edge swipes for drawers and regular 
> horizontal swipes for switching between dives can coexist in Subsurface as 
> well as it can coexist in stock Android apps (see e.g. GMail or Photos), and 
> if problems come up, I'd like to know what causes them and whether we can fix 
> them.

I think you are right. I poked Sebastian to help us get a first
implementation of that in place so our testers can play with it. But based
on spending two minutes with GMail on my Nexus 6p I'm convinced now that
this will work

(btw: I didn't notice an action button in GMail - what am I missing?)

> > Either way, I'd love to stay engaged with you and the Plasma Mobile
> > developers to create the best possible user experience for our users.
> 
> Definitely! We need feedback from people who use our components in the real 
> world. Design must not happen in an ivory tower, which is why I am eternally 
> grateful that you are using our components even in their very early stage and 
> are happy to provide feedback so we can continuously improve them. We really 
> need that!

For Subsurface the huge advantage is that we are getting two things we are
dearly missing: a) help with figuring out the user interaction design
(YAY!) and b) help with the QML implementation (since it is becoming very
clear to me that I still have a HUGE learning curve ahead of me there...)

So this is mutually benefitial :-)

/D