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Desktop Neo – rethinking the desktop interface for productivity

desktopneo.com

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Re: Desktop Neo – rethinking the desktop interface for productivity

#51

Post by dman »

dangoor wrote: post #34
fuzzywalrus wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, the folder metaphor works as its a direct visualization of the hierarchy of the computer.

I remember what Yahoo! was originally like: a nice, hierarchical categorization of websites. That was great when there were 1,000 websites. Maybe even okay for 10,000. Google quickly became an obviously superior approach. Back when Yahoo! was a categorized directory of sites, my computer had probably 1GB of storage. I didn't have a digital camera or many thousands of email messages. I didn't have as many documents th…

I think the central problem is that few userspace programs get as much engineering and tooling thrown at them as the filesystems. Itunes and similar apps which implement their own abstractions for organizing content have always trailed the filesystem for me in the following aspects

a. Hard to access the data outside the single ui

b. Performance of data import / export trails raw folders / file systems

c. Hard to figure out how to atomically backup the content in an incremental way.

d. No programmatic access.

Re: Desktop Neo – rethinking the desktop interface for productivity

#52

Post by falcolas »

Tiling window manager, with easy back-and-forth? Works for me.

I have to say, I really like tagging-as-filesystem concept (where you can also meta-tag something), and the gaze/touch interaction proposed would be awesome to have in my opinion.

The current interaction with tagging (basing off OS X) is still pretty clunky. It's a separate field, the new vs previous tag selection is aggravating with a keyboard, and there's no easy way to browse or select multiple tags to filter content.

Having to move to and from the mouse a lot is a bit of a pain, and even with the best touchpads on the market, the interaction with them can still be annoying when trying to do things like click on a HN upvote arrow. Being able to start the mouse from the point you're looking at, or even forgot the mouse entirely when starting typing into the field you're looking at - those would be fantastic additions.

I'm slightly more dubious about the voice interaction, though there are times where "Hey Siri, set a timer for 10 minutes" is a great way to interact with an otherwise over-complicated device.

Re: Desktop Neo – rethinking the desktop interface for productivity

#53

Post by huuu »

tomc1985 wrote: post #12

The problem with the tablet analogy is nobody seems to know how to design complex, professional-level (like Photoshop, or Blender) applications in that paradigm. Tablet apps are overwhelmingly consumption-oriented, and those that aren't all seem to be oriented around popular (and populist) appeal. Why is everyone out for the blood of the desktop/windows paradigm? Why can't the simplified-tablet market and the desktop…

Talking about Blender: I think that the way windows work in Blender could make a great OS window manager. Devide the panels the way you like and select a program or part of a program you like to show inside the panel.

There are window manager who can do this but imho not as simple as Blender.

Re: Desktop Neo – rethinking the desktop interface for productivity

#54

Post by falcolas »

dangrossman wrote: post #47

It seems like a lot of people skimmed without reading the top or bottom of this site: It's not a company. It's not a product. You're not being asked to buy it or buy into it, just to discuss the concept if you'd like. This website is a portfolio piece for a 21-year-old university student hoping to find an internship. In my opinion, it's an impressive demonstration of his design and technical skills. It certainly says…

To be fair, it's also a good, cohesive amalgamation of UI interaction concepts as well. If someone did realize this design, I'd be on-board for trying it out.

Re: Desktop Neo – rethinking the desktop interface for productivity

#55

Post by jchendy »

atm0sphere wrote: post #50
dangrossman wrote: post #47

It seems like a lot of people skimmed without reading the top or bottom of this site: It's not a company. It's not a product. You're not being asked to buy it or buy into it, just to discuss the concept if you'd like. This website is a portfolio piece for a 21-year-old university student hoping to find an internship. In my opinion, it's an impressive demonstration of his design and technical skills. It certainly says…

I agree with everything you said. This is a brilliant resume and he ought to be looking for gainful employment, rather than just an internship.

> he should be looking for gainful employment, rather than just an internship.

Presumably he wants to finish college, in which case an internship totally makes sense.

Re: Desktop Neo – rethinking the desktop interface for productivity

#56

Post by __jal »

893helios wrote: post #14
Karawebnetwork wrote: post #2

"About this Concept Neo was designed to inspire and provoke discussions about the future of productive computing. It is not going to be a real working operating system interface, it is just a concept. I am not saying that these ideas would definitely work and that this is the future of computing. However, there is large potential in rethinking the core interfaces of desktop computing for modern needs, and somebody ha…

Argh! What's the point of developing of fully fleshed out work piece like this that doesn't and won't exist! Well other than self-promotion and a fear of it actually totally sucking after it hits the real world of people.

Bruce Sterling has a phrase for this: "design fiction".

Design fiction tends to be some combination of portfolio piece/job application, argument about the direction of whatever is being designed (here, desktop-ish UI/UX), wish fulfillment, conversation piece, and sometime social critique.

Re: Desktop Neo – rethinking the desktop interface for productivity

#57

Post by grp »

orthecreedence wrote: post #33
tomc1985 wrote: post #12

The problem with the tablet analogy is nobody seems to know how to design complex, professional-level (like Photoshop, or Blender) applications in that paradigm. Tablet apps are overwhelmingly consumption-oriented, and those that aren't all seem to be oriented around popular (and populist) appeal. Why is everyone out for the blood of the desktop/windows paradigm? Why can't the simplified-tablet market and the desktop…

Right, this seems to me to be a tiling window manager with a touch interface. This is kind of an odd combination too, because most tiling WMs are keyboard oriented, whereas most non-tiling WMs are pointer oriented. Maybe that's just historical and doesn't really make much of a difference though. But with i3, I have keybindings to "open the last browser window i used" or "open the last gvim window i opened." I can til…

In case, for the tag-based filesystem, there are tmsu [1].

I will try it soon with ranger [2], I think managing tags with it won't be a problem as you can call the shell where you want.

[1] http://tmsu.org/ [2] http://ranger.nongnu.org/

Re: Desktop Neo – rethinking the desktop interface for productivity

#59

Post by foofoo55 »

ziburski wrote: post #45
rocky1138 wrote: post #29

First paragraph in and I'm already not their customer: "We now use smartphones and tablets most of the time, since they are much easier to use." No. Just no. I don't want to use a touchscreen and closed ecosystem to develop software. That would be a nightmare. The rest of the design seems to be taken straight from 10/GUI.

I agree! Desktop Neo isn't about using touchscreen or tablets to replace the desktop. The opposite, actually. It tries to move the desktop even further away from phones by rethinking it for professional users. And yep, the first part about using panels was very much inspired by 10/GUI. I am linking to that concept on the website, and also talked to Clayton Miller before publishing Desktop Neo.

I can see that most comments here didn't read your entire article. I work at my two-monitor desktop 90% of the time. I really like your ideas. Most of the time I only need to see two application windows at a time.

Maybe the your article needs to immediately clarify who you are and the intent of the design, and maybe differentiate between your design intended for producers vs. consumers.

Re: Desktop Neo – rethinking the desktop interface for productivity

#60

Post by orky56 »

dangrossman wrote: post #47

It seems like a lot of people skimmed without reading the top or bottom of this site: It's not a company. It's not a product. You're not being asked to buy it or buy into it, just to discuss the concept if you'd like. This website is a portfolio piece for a 21-year-old university student hoping to find an internship. In my opinion, it's an impressive demonstration of his design and technical skills. It certainly says…

This guy has the chops to come up with a well designed concept and should have the opportunity to defend & iterate on it based on constructive feedback. Some of these comments provide that feedback while others flatly have an issue with the idea of a concept altogether. It's unfortunate that desktop UI has remained stuck for quite awhile and only MS & Apple can really provide a new paradigm for people to adopt. Both companies are basically thinking mobile-first which makes the compromises for productive desktop UIs inevitable. By forcing ourselves to think of productivity as a priority, it brings about concepts like this which give us a glimmer of hope on how technology is more than just giving us innovation in consumption only.
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