One new subscriber from Anothr Alerts…

1) Audience? 2) Goal?

It’s pretty simple. Your statement “and ultimately no-one is 100% correct.” is probably a little incorrect in and of itself.

There is no such thing as ‘general computer interaction’. It’s a myth.

Pick an audience and pick your goal / communication. Inevitably it is why Apple is much lauded on the OS landscape. Bear in mind, they also have a pile of well educated and trained designers.

If GNOME wants to forge ahead, it needs to quit worrying about they mythical ‘everyone’ and more about ‘you — yes you there!’.

The user needs different views for searching (contextual responses to queries), browsing (everything is a playlist), sorting (piles could be useful for sorting but shouldn’t be imposed) and working.

We should definately question the messy window paradigm and the desktop metaphor is outdated and broken. Moving to a psudo-naturalistic post-modern concept won’t fix it.

For most daily computer tasks, people shouldn’t have to think about apps at all. (Hmm, which app to open this photo in?)

If you base the interface around:

People – this is an obvious one.

OBJECTS (Data, Text, Images, music, videos) Why can’t you just create a new table object then call spreadsheet-like functions as you need them?

Associations (Metadata, this photo is associated with these people and will appear in the “virtual folder” ( Or whatever) associated with them.

Views (consistent but context sensitive views, both structured and yes, free-form and semi-free-form. lists, icon – variable size, WORKSPACES – freeform space containing context data for particular tasks) Variable views for contacts, pull the border to view increasingly more data, starting from a photo-icon the with name, then more… up to showing all the objects associated with that contact)

Collections (smart folders, playlists, photo albums, contact lists, projects, all-the-files-bob-has-ever-sent-me. Think of project folders which show all the people and objects associated wiht that project but not as a simple list!)

Actions or tasks (Editing text, sending, painting, adding a layer to an image, chatting, searching, browsing etc.)

Tools to perform actions (context sensitive. ref:Apple inspector for iWork apps, context menus, Office Ribbon etc.) You should be able to click on an image in your finder/file manager and perform common editing tasks without going any further but the transition to more complex editing shouldn’t make you feel you are opening a particular app (Especially not the GIMP!)

You won’t go far wrong. The above are not metaphors but what is actually going on between the user and their computer. None of the above requires or justifies much 3D, although an accelerated and rich-looking UI is great. There are many tools and frameworks (Tracker, Gstreamer, Telepathy, gegl, Dbus) which are maturing nicely to allow a more integrated experience. Dare I mention such things as Tinymail and the Dbus port of EDS?

One thing to consider about UI is that if it’s good on a small screen, it probably translates to a big screen well but the opposite is not true. Linux has huge potential on portable devices.

Customisation is great. Look at Adium on the Mac. This kind of customisation could be applied to many different cases. Diary/calender/journal can be themed, watermarked etc. WebKit….

The current window paradigm wastes lots of space and requires lots of window resizing/moving/finding. There’s a lot to recommend a non-overlapping interface (mmm, panes, not windows).

Lots of data the computer provides (New mail, person signed on, non-critical system messages, news items) could be sent to a standardised notification framework the the user can choose how that is displayed (menubar).

I think I’ve ranted enough for now…

Oh yeah, how about adopting D? It could be the basis of an entire “better than OpenStep” OO/OS framework. Or is that a suggestion too far?

Mike C

I totally agree with your belief that the computing experience would be more intuitive if it emulated our real tactile environment suitably. On a minor note, I made an attempt a few years ago to make a different type of music player for this reason. Lack of programming expertise and maturity on my part meant it never made it past concept really but if anyone want’s a look or a laugh -> http://www24.brinkster.com/jreidy/

Equally critical is knowing what the user /is/ doing. I have always been dumbfounded by how oblivious my computer is about what I’m doing. Case and point: the screensaver turns on while I am watching a video online. I do multiple things with my computer at the same time; each ought to be aware of the others. The screensaver is the perfect app to illustrate this point since it’s all about intuiting user state (at or away from the screen). Screensavers ought to:

• Never /ever/ start while I’m watching a video. With Totem, with VLC, in a browser; any video, any place, no screensaver.

• If I jiggle the mouse immediately after the screensaver comes on, I’M BUSY. It should wait longer before coming on again. And longer still if it happens again.

• I read loads of text every day. Emails, websites, Wikipedia articles: It would be trivial for the computer to statistically calculate my average reading speed based upon the volume of text and the speed at which I scroll. The screensaver should /never/ come on before I have had time to read all of the text on screen.

My screensaver is set to 2 hrs because its too stupid to bear. If it were smart, it might actually be useful. Another example of universal state info: if I do /anything/ with audio (play a video, start a VOIP call, begin recording from my mic) my music should automatically pause. If I finish my interstitial aural activity within a reasonable time (a few minutes), then the music ought to resume. But don’t stop there. If I open a video but then mute it, bring back the music. Maybe even give me %50 music volume when I set the movie to %50 volume. Simple stuff like that.

“I’m listening to music. Don’t you know that?! Who’s the freakin’ logic machine in this relationship!”