User Centered

Way back in 2002, I found a little web browser called Opera that had this feature that just blew me out of the water...mouse gestures.

Since I've become to rely on them for browsing, I'm also looking at all the other plugins and extensions that extend this functionality to other pieces of software and interfaces.

Phones now have accelerometers that detect 3D movement, so it seems natural to use movement and gestures to perform functions on the phone.

I've just viewed the video for this phonepoint pen project by Duke students that uses the movement to translate and do OCR on captured movement to text. I think this is interesting, but not very practical. Instead, I'd like to capture the movement and translate them directly to commands. Keeping with the Opera browser mindset, I'm picturing a handful of easy to perform gestures that are one or two linear movements that can be turned into key phone functionality. Apple is tapping into this idea, they just announced "voice control" and they have a handful of physical based gestures- but they are just on the tip of the iceberg: they have "shake to undo" or "shake to refresh" functionality, but this can be extended...

• Speed Dialing a phone number (one gesture for each favorite contact)
  
• Launching a browser
  
• Initiate a desktop-to-mobile sync/handshake
  
• Move data from phone to desktop
  
• Copy, paste, delete, add...
  
• Refreshing the current view (existing)
  
• Shake to undo (exsiting)
  
• launch maps and use current location (ideal for auto based "where am I?" queries)
  

But mainly things you'd be likely to in an automobile or need to get at frequently and quickly...what I like about gestures, is that you can do them without paying attention to the interface- there's no mental/cognitive cycles spent doing mundane interface manipulation. You're using muscle memory. Like my browser mouse gestures, I can still be in the middle of finishing up scanning the text of the page and close the page without any movement to the "x" button (or any real thought). at the sake of going off on my mouse gesture tangent, I'll leave it at "if you get it, you get it, if not, you don't" and just press on: On the mobile device, this opportunity is greater. I think this is easier to use than even physical speed dial buttons since you'll have to orient your hand to the phone and find the right button. With a physical gesture, you can find a single "activate" button (which would be consistent for all gestures of course) and then just let your muscle memory do the flailing!

I can think of some contexts & settings where voice controlling would be more appropriate, and I can certainly think of times when it would be more discrete to swipe your phone quietly through the air.

Anyway, I'm almost certain that someone already has some form of this out that goes beyond the "shake to X" functionality, so I suppose I should just wait patiently for someone to point it out in the comments. I've seen the speed dialer app that lets you make a gesture on the screen of the iPhone to dial someone, but that has none of the advantages of abstracted UI that I mentioned.

I'll link this up because I'm excited about the Palm Pre's focus on user experience and data conservation. Plus, I think the interviewed Roger McNamee is pretty reasonable when surveying the mobile landscape...

Interview RE Palm Pre

Someone finally implemented an idea I mentioned here, integrating a Bluetooth headset directly into the phone!

Interesting concept, there's only a few details from gizmodo. The usability aspects are interesting- you charge only one device, you can choose to use it or not, but it's always available (not in your car when you want it elsewhere), you don't have to carry the headset around with you. I think it makes sense to combine phone with handset.

dantesoft, who clearly was concerned about the lack of posting as of late, sends in yet another link from the Technology Review

Precision Pointing with Fat Fingers

Interesting approach. It's nice to have a toolbox of techiniques to use as we get more mobile devices and interesting interfaces.

Thanks again Dantesoft!

One of the hallmarks of today's generation of mobile devices is a built in camera. I love the convenience of having it around, but why do we need it? Rather, what do we really do with it? I'm sure you bought it thinking that you now have the ability to:

• Snap pictures of your run in with Tom Hanks at that Los Angeles cafe
  
• Capture the "fender-bender" for the purposes of having them be admissible into a court of law
  
• Replace your Digital SLR for capturing the sun setting over the Pyramids of Giza (insert you correct spelling)
  
• Have an image to go along with every person in your address book.
  
• You see something funny/interesting/cool you want to blog/share/save
  

According to my rigorous scientific studies (ie- completely made-up) 98.56% of the usage of your camera is for the last bullet there. What's got me writing today is that even from that bogus number, a large percentage of those things I take a picture of are not anything i want to have around for any extended period of time. If it *is* something I want to keep around, I would have already emailed/sent it off to a place where I could more easily share/retrieve it.

So what are we left with? In my case a phone full of garbage that needs to be cleaned up in regular intervals. Why isn't there a "Send but don't save" option? Does your phone have this? Every phone I've seen lets you do the following:

• Save
  
• Delete
  
• Send
  

..mine also offers quick menu access to take another picture, or to set as callerID/Wallpaper.

I never see a "send and delete" or an automatic image cleanup, which is most often what I'd like to see happen. I'd like that UI above, but see a distinction between "save" and what I'll call a "work with" or "working image." (A better term would be appreciated...) This working image is something you are going to send, or crop or set or share with someone via MMS or email.. something that you don't want to "save" onto your phone in the traditional desktop sense. Speaking of the desktop, it's not immune to this either- working with screen captures and file manipulations and image downloads, you often end up with a littered file system that takes a strict "system" to keep the craft from the clutter. This system is most often just the user's behavior that compensates/adjusts for the lacking software. For example, in my case: "I store all my 'temp' files on the desktop- that forces me to deal with it eventually..."


Some picture I've already used, but is still on my phone.
BTW-Opera can we get a *real* image caption thing here?


In the case of the phone, I'd like the same "clean-up" rules applied to images as are applied to messages (MMS/Emails/etc..). All the handsets I've had offer a clean up after "X" days of messages. Applied to images, this would clean out all old *unsaved* images...of course, if you do happen to run into Tom Hanks and you want to show that around to everyone you meet, you'd just choose to save the image and it would be spared. Designed *this* way, the phone interface would be more in tune with my usage.

It seems silly to me to treat images differently than messages. Sure we tend to get much more of the text variety (so "X" wouldn't be the same for both), but the same circumstances apply. Some are important which we know to save or flag or move.. but images are all assumed to priceless artifacts just waiting to be submitted to the Louvre, when in reality it's a funny misspelled sign you saw on the way to work three weeks ago that you already blogged about.


edited- fixed my backwards logic