UI and Services Revolution needed…
Thomas Menguy | September 26, 2006Today, in the cellphone space (as it was for the PC years ago), two main applications/services launching UI paradigms are fighting for dominance:
- Icones that launch applications : All architectures needs a kind of “glue” or shell, called explorer on Windows. This is the path choosen by high level OS : great for dynamic downloads, new applications. Look at you windows/linux Desktop, your PalmOS explorer , your s60 or pocketPC one…same concepts of text/icon point and click : very poor for services interactions, UI consistency.
- Ad hoc UI : the “Menu” Application in many proprietary OS : great for integration, with user interaction fine tuning, ad hoc customization by operator, wrong for code maintenance and dynamique expandability.
Application icones are way are toooo poor, see the MacOS Dock, or the windows system tray: they are only artificial appendices to present services in a different way.
Going further, the application concept is also way toooo poor: we need some services that can easily be mixed with no knowledge of each other. When I say mixed, … I say mixed: graphically of course, but also with all the possible user interactions … and inter services interactions. Any services should be able to use a part of an address book to play with contacts nicely,.
The first industry answer seems to point out the “widget” concept (no, it’s not too distant from the gtk button, or Qt list, but a lot more powerfull): weather, clock, calendar, stock tickers, shortcut to common actions, etc.. but it can be more, look at those interesting links:
- Widsets (and the blog: http://blog.widsets.com/) : an interesting widget framework in java for mobile phones, with a widget catalog.
- http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard : the concept seen by apple, as always very stylish
- http://widgets.yahoo.com/ : yahoo is playing see game also
- innovationcreators.: widget/mashup/mashet/widgeup Mashup! how to merge some services… THIS IS a big issue for me.
- http://blog.landspurg.net/mobile-widget-frenzy-mobidget-is-coming : another company presentation that wants to push widgets concept to the phones…
- http://blog.landspurg.net/opera-widget-strategy-widgets-everywhere : Opera also is joining the arena!
- http://blog.nooked.com/archives/2006/06/widget_marketin.htm : it states that widgets are coming .. but how to promote and market them? => for me the big issue would be “how to find one that fits my needs?” (see the apple dashboard catalog for a big tree list ….good luck to find anything really relevant!)
The big thing seems to be around web services made simple.
For service interactions, and above all user “awarness” (find and use what you need) the descritpion of the service seems even more important, and many technology are popping around for that (SOAP, some .NET framework aspects, etc).
But today, in the cellphone industry, the ad hoc design is still there and really not loosing ground: eSim, digital airways, flash lite, …
Those frameworks are pushing a full descriptive approach to allow a full integrated MMI with rich services …. and Operator requirements, that are REALLY FAR from the PC “standard” common UI design principles.
After all what is important is the decorelation between the service and its view: this is not more that the good’ol MVC (Model-View-Controller) that has never been correctly designed nor implmented in a framework (but is it really possible in the real world? where applications developpers still think that they HAD to set directly the color on THEIR beloved button/list/combo whatever ….).
As always the right solutions may lay in between…Nokia, in S60 tries to push the “S60 Application Interworking” or AIW: after all the strength of S60 … is that it doesn’t looks like a smartphone with an High-Level OS, it is focusing on what phone users want (http://blogs.s60.com/seeintos60/2006/04/the_coolest_features.html) : simply dealing with their content in any possible forms …
this is another story … about transversal services to help services work with each others…
2 links related to your post : - "Live" UI :
Pascal | September 26, 20062 links related to your post :
- “Live” UI : http://www.mobiface.com/view.php?id=49
- Interesting article on how (Mobile)Ajax will revolutionize mobile web application (strong related with UI): http://opengardensblog.futuretext.com/archives/2006/09/soonr_or_later_1.html (seen on Carnival of the Mobilists #45)
Thanks Pascal! Mobiface seems to be a great blog. And the
tmenguy | September 26, 2006Thanks Pascal!
Mobiface seems to be a great blog. And the AJAX comment at opengardes worth the read…
I didn’t you add a blog also, you find me thanks to Ludo?
Thomas
I have just google you just after Ludo's party... quite
Pascal | September 27, 2006I have just google you just after Ludo’s party… quite usual for me to google people
He he, seems strange to be googled :-)
tmenguy | September 27, 2006He he, seems strange to be googled
[...] Ruby on Rails is really pushing the MVC (Model
Everything and the Mobile Software Universe… » Web Developpement frameworks… | October 16, 2006[...] Ruby on Rails is really pushing the MVC (Model View Controller see my post here and here) paradigm to its limits, with a clean high level language….I’ll try to use it as soon as possible. OpenLaszlo claims to bring the desktop power to web applications … and the approach seems greats (look at the examples) : the UI is described in clean XML, then everything is compiled in Flash or DHTML, AJAX stuff/javascript are hidden. [...]