Usability Review of OpenMoko GTK+ Applications

Shawn Rutledge shawn.t.rutledge at gmail.com
Mon Mar 10 18:53:49 CET 2008


On Mon, Mar 10, 2008 at 6:27 AM, Thomas Wood <thomas at openedhand.com> wrote:
>  The icons in the bar at the top of the screen should not be interactive,
>  as they are too small to use with a finger. This means all the top icons
>  should not respond to clicks and it should be used for displaying status
>  only.

This is contrary to expectations, based on having used other phones.

IMO if you click in that area, it should open a quickie little control
panel from which you can change all the most important settings (power
on/off the GSM/GPS/Bluetooth, make BT discoverable, set the ring
"profile", maybe others but I think those are the important ones)
That way you don't have to click on a specific status icon: touching
anywhere in the right 1/3 or so of the status bar would bring up the
same panel.

>  They keyboard should only pop-up when a user explicitly requests it.
>  Usually this is most conveniently done by popping up the keyboard when a
>  user taps inside an entry field. Eventually it would also be nice to be
>  able to switch between different types of keyboard, but the multi-tap
>  should be enough for now.

Since entry methods have generated so much discussion, I think the
switching between different types is actually important, and the
affordance to do so needs to be designed in already, even if
implementing them will come later.

Your other suggestions sound like good ones.



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