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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

#91

Post by stormbrew »

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…

I would personally kill for better mouse integration in i3 (which I use on all my daily-use machines), and I would be extremely happy to augment it with touch screen support (which I would largely want to use for tile manipulation).

In fact, a main reason I use i3 is because it is literally the least ideological tiling window manager when it comes to mouse use. The productivity gains I get out of tiling don't come from using the keyboard, they come from not having to deal with the (imo, especially in the post-1024x768 era) very messy overlapping window model. Things are where I expect. I can move them from one screen to another and sane things happen. Plugging in and unplugging a display doesn't make hash of my organization. Things are never buried under incomprehensible layers. And so on.

Re: Desktop Neo – rethinking the desktop interface for productivity

#92

Post by tadfisher »

NoGravitas wrote: post #82
falcolas wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think some of the core concepts would work well as a Gnome 3 shell extension.

You might try building on top of (or researching) ShellShape: https://github.com/timbertson/shellshape

Re: Desktop Neo – rethinking the desktop interface for productivity

#93

Post by semi-extrinsic »

ziburski wrote: post #40
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…

This is exactly the idea of Desktop Neo. If tablets and phones are used for consumption, the desktop can be focused on productivity. I don't want to replace the complexity of the desktop with interfaces that are easier. I want them to be better, to be more efficient for professionals. Concepts like panels, tags and touch input are probably way harder to understand than windows, folders and mouse input. But it doesn’t…

> I want them to be better, to be more efficient for professionals.

This is a good goal. But gestures and multitouch will not lead you on the path to that goal. Consider tiling window managers like awesome or i3, that already today help programmers (myself included) be more efficient. They achieve this by reducing time-consuming dragging, dropping, resizing and clicking actions either by replacing them with keyboard shortcuts or simply by automating them away. A UI where you have to move your hands even further (distance keyboard-screen > distance keyboard-mouse) will actually decrease productivity (and likely cause RSI problems as well).

I realise this is a mockup/concept design. But if you want to pursue the idea further, I very much recommend using a tiling window manager for an extended period of time, to learn from that paradigm.

Re: Desktop Neo – rethinking the desktop interface for productivity

#94

Post by zeta0134 »

[deleted] wrote: post #81
aikah wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is style of substance. The presentation,the design of the website is great, but the content feels like a bunch of random incoherent stuff put together with a catchy name. Yes the webpage is beautiful, there are nice animations, but that's it, there is nothing else. It's an nice portfolio though, but there is nothing to discuss when it comes to UX/UI itself.

[deleted]

Because that's been done before; go lookup 10 GUI, and it will look remarkably similar. It's different from the accepted standard, but not actually a new concept.

Re: Desktop Neo – rethinking the desktop interface for productivity

#95

Post by EdSharkey »

I've sometimes thought the most egalitarian way to design a GUI would be to make it exquisitely accessible to the blind. This would force designers to organize their GUI with sensible, navigable hierarchies of data and controls.

To me, an exquisitely blind-accessible GUI's should function like a fancy keyboard navigable/editable graph data structure that echoes the hierarchies and relationships represented on the sighted displays. The biggest boon to such a GUI would be that the blind-accessible controls would function as an "expert" mode of navigating the GUI - one would never have to touch the mouse or trackpad to get stuff done.

Sighted users would benefit from learning these keyboard controls and we'd inject some hyper-productivity back into our apps to counter the fisher-price'ification that has been creeping into GUI's over the past 10 years.

Re: Desktop Neo – rethinking the desktop interface for productivity

#96

Post by drzaiusapelord »

orky56 wrote: post #60
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…

>t's unfortunate that desktop UI has remained stuck for quite awhile

A lot of things get "stuck" and for good reason. Steering wheel, gas, and brake. Sight, trigger, stock. Underwear, pants, socks, etc.

Personally, I think the NT team really nailed the concept of the desktop back in 1993 with 3.1. The start button which hid programs and allowed access to other functions was incredibly handy, a bit like how a desk has a desk drawer within reach at all times. The desktop as a dumping ground for whatever you choose and system tray for misc stuff really, really works well and with mimimal cruft. Windows applications worked unlike MacOS applications by integrating the menu bar directly into the application itself instead of making it a detached accessory of the OS. Right-click support also allowed a lot of dynamic functionality.

I understand that almost none of these specific were their innovations, but they took a lot of half-cooked ideas and made something very, very usable.

Its a shame the NT team is never brought up like the Amiga or MacOS teams. I don't think they've gotten their proper due. Its also interesting that MS ran back to the start button/menu only three years after letting it go. Its incredible how powerful the NT way of doing things still is.

Re: Desktop Neo – rethinking the desktop interface for productivity

#97

Post by rocky1138 »

Etheryte wrote: post #86
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.

>Not their customer They're not selling (or offering, for that matter) you anything. This is a design concept not a product.

This is a local bit of English slang. Essentially it means "this isn't for me" not that we are actually not going to buy the product or service, literally.

Re: Desktop Neo – rethinking the desktop interface for productivity

#98

Post by superuser2 »

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…

In my world (music, concert, theater production) we depend on a lot of equipment which is basically a computer and a custom physical control surface, retailing for 10x the price of the computer. The keyboard and mouse interface is simply not good enough to replicate faders and knobs. The tablet interface, on the other hand, is. This has important implications for light boards, sound boards, and DAW controllers. For many of them the domain-specific IO by itself isn't actually that expensive and the software can run on commodity computers. We were only locked into custom hardware because we needed its control surfaces to work efficiently.

Existing desktop workflows may not be improved, but existing custom-control-surface workflows can be made vastly cheaper and more flexible, consolidated onto relatively commodotized hardware, and in some niches this is happening.

Re: Desktop Neo – rethinking the desktop interface for productivity

#99

Post by masmullin »

ziburski wrote: post #77
masmullin wrote: post #70

Why something as intuitive as eye tracking, but something as clunky as touchpad gestures? Surely if technology is good enough to track the eye, we don't need a touchpad to track hand gestures? I really like this concept, but when I heard "three finger scroll" I died a little inside.

Sadly, technology isn't good enough for eye tracking to completely replace the mouse. Your eye will always flutter a little and wander around, so you can't rely on eye tracking exclusively. It's also not really practical to perform gestures with your eyes. So you'll still want a touchpad to have quick access to common features through these gestures. I have actually researched this topic quite a lot, and have also be…

I didn't mean to insinuate that technology is at a point where eye tracking excellent, I meant to play along with the video where it was a requirement of the new desktop that eye tracking be excellent.

Thus in this theoretical world where eye tracking is excellent, why is hand gesturing not as advanced as eye tracking?

Re: Desktop Neo – rethinking the desktop interface for productivity

#100

Post by orky56 »

dangrossman wrote: post #62
orky56 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

He's interested in the feedback and is here participating in the discussion (@ziburski). I just felt compelled to write something after reading a couple silly "you lost me as a customer" and "what's the point" comments.

I actually wanted to thank you for your parent comment. It needed to be said and gave me a chance to say what was on my mind. Hope you didn't take my comment negatively.
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