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Static vs active application icons

tote_b5 | 18 July, 2008 12:16

I found an interesting blog about mobile interaction design at Sender 11 (whatever that name means). The point of the article is that in order to make application icons more attractive and provide a better user-experience, the icons should refresh their content from time to time and show "relevant" information to the user instead of being passive and showing only static information.

I like the idea. As one of the comments says with Nokia S60s you can now build interfaces wiht live icons like these in web-run-time and create a whole menu as a widget. Well, I don't know much about widgets, but I can imagine that it would work. For example, the whole Application Shell could make use of Web run-time and show application entry points (i.e. icons) as widgets with their always-changing behavior. Even more, the idea of Active Idle could be replaced by an active Application Shell, too. Some pixels could also be saved from precious screen real-estate (e.g. unread messages) by letting the application icons show information.

What could different applications show to the user? Here's a by far incomplete list out of my mind:

  • Calendar: indication about events nearby
  • Messaging: unread messages (sms, e-mail, etc.)
  • Bluetooth connectivity: enabled vs disabled, transfer in progress
  • WLAN connectivity: enabled vs disabled, number of hotspots nearby
  • Maps: known (i.e. pre-recorded) locations nearby
  • Clock: time
  • Music Player: some information about tune being played (with scrolling, for example)
  • RSS reader: new, unread items
  • etc.
Could you add more?

Tote
mobile-thoughts.blogspot.com

RSSComments

Performance concerns?

mgroeber9110 | 18/07/2008, 13:09

This would indeed be very useful, and I especially like the idea of saving screen real-estate as well as complexity by merging indicators and application icons, and thus generally reducing the number of entities on the screen (perhaps to the point where the root folder of the Menu and the Idle screen could be merged into one, without seeming cluttered).

A "new mail" envelope that appears on top of the icon that lets you open the message would actually make it much clearer what you have to do to read the message.

One thing that would worry me a bit about this is that it could easily lead to solutions that work great in prototype, but ultimately don't deliver in a real handset.

Having full widgets as icons on the Active Standby screen would bring the risk of always carrying the entire web browser along, and loading even more components when the phone starts up already and/or replacing entire menus that consisted of a simple listbox before with web page (if you have ever waited for the "Add/Remove Software" dialog in Windows to open, you know what I mean...).

However, I would be very much in favour of a simple framework for an application to refresh its icon in the menu and the Active Idle screen, by just updating the SVG behind it - this would probably be something that people could put to all sorts of creative uses.

Re: Static vs active application icons

ARJWright | 21/07/2008, 19:21

I'd love to see this personally, but probably a bit more advanced than just showing a state change.

For example, a puslating contact's icon would mean that someone in your addy book is located nearby. An onfocus event would just show the person's name in a tooltip like manner.

For items like SMS/MMS/Email, having a pulsing icon that then shows the number of new items would be a good idea. Could also have a state for the email icon when connectivity has errored out.

The idea being to not just show (passive) items, but also give an incentive to interact having been notified. And because these are icons, rather than all out system prompts, there is less disruption on the side of the user that needs to be interacted with before its ignoted. An icon state can be ignored, or it can be paid attention to at the discretion of the user, rather than the need of the application.

Re: Static vs active application icons

henit | 05/09/2008, 16:46

Hi everyone.

A few days ago, I was surfing the web and I found out a project that works over most mobile phones which lets you know where your friends are in real time and update your status in twitter. It´s called Dimdix.

On their website they say you don´t need a GPS system to detect your location. Does anyone know how this works?

I´m using a Motorola L7 and amazingly it detected my location.

I cannot stop thinking of all the things I could do with it.

If anyone wants to take a look you can go here

Thanks,

Regards,

Juan

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