Usability Review of OpenMoko GTK+ Applications

Marcus Bauer marcus.bauer at gmail.com
Tue Mar 11 13:51:58 CET 2008



I'm using the Neo on a daily basis and am developing for it, I'll  add
some of my experiences here.


On Mon, 2008-03-10 at 13:27 +0000, Thomas Wood wrote:
> Today Application
> -----------------
> My suggestions are:
> 
> * Remove the running application list - this is a desktop paradigm that
> has no place on an embedded device

Agreed, I never use it. I would replace it with (a much needed)
configuration tab for i.e.:
- keyboard management (onscreen,external...)
- bluetooth (paired devices etc)
- usb (switch host-device-mode, switch usb-net to usb-mass storage)
- some more powermanagement here, i.e. time until light dims
- background, ringtone...
- theme



> * Add a running indicator and a close button to items in the application
> list if they are running. This is really a work around  as we do not
> have proper session management yet, but it is nicer than having two
> separate lists for applications.

Isn't the power button enough for quitting running apps? I wouldn't add
anything to the app list - to fiddely. KISS...


> Contacts Application
> --------------------
> 
> * Remove tabs from bottom and buttons from top of index page

The toolbar button on the top give quick access to the most wanted
functions: "send sms", "call", "add new contact" - I use them a lot and
think they are very useful.

> * Switch to a contact details when list item is clicked

When you use your fingers to select an entry you do not always select
the right one on the first go, thus the split of actions "selecting" and
"showing details" makes a lot of sense to me. I would leave it like it
is.

> * Add groups button to toolbar in details page

The groups tab is the only one I would move elsewhere into a better
context (i.e. "Add new contact" and "Edit contact")

> * Remove communication history page(?)

So far everyone told me that this is a cool feature missing on all other
phones. I love it ;-)

What I mostly miss:
- a category "mobile" for the type of phone number
- more contact details
- a remarks field


> 
> Status bar
> ----------
> 
> 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.

Not everything needs to be finger usable - actually I wouldn't give up
on the icon responses, I use them a lot and would even extend them. When
I have a stylus then I can gain quick access, when I don't then I go
through the Today Application.

Especially as we have such a high resolution screen which is just fun to
use with a stylus too, not just with the fingers.

> I'd like to suggest adding a bar at the bottom of the screen that is
> divided equally into three or less buttons. One of these buttons would
> be used for taking the user back to the home screen.

The screen is already so small, adding another bar takes away valuable
space. The user can go back to the home screen with the second button
already - that is a very good solution and very quick too.


> Application menus could be made accessible by either the left of the top
> status bar (with appropriate indicator next to the application name), or
> from an extra button in the bottom bar.

IMHO menues should be up to the applications - for the window manager
the mantra should be: KISS, keep it simple, stupid. 

Plus: many apps don't need an application menu bar - think of the dialer
and the calculator. Menu bars are an old relict from the 80ies - if
there is a good thing about Web2.0 then it is the death of menu bars :)


> Keyboard
> --------
> 
> 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.

Very good point. The keyboard should be user selectable. Additionally it
should not pop up at all when an external keyboard is used. I would even
prefer it not automatically to pop up when in an input field, even when
no external keyboard is attached.

> If it is not possible to bring up the keyboard on entry tap, then it
> should be enabled and disabled by a button in the bottom bar.

A bottom bar is the wrong solution for the problem (of only two hardware
buttons). Again this could be done with the second hardware button,
adding a button to the aux menu. The bottom button bar will most of the
time eat valuable screen estate.


> Theme
> -----
> 
> The biggest problem with the current theme is performance. The main
> issue here is the use of gradients which requires either stretching
> images or dithering (for 16bit display). Both these are a significant
> performance hit, so I would like to suggest redesigning the theme to be
> faster and more efficient.

Although I like the theme, another and faster theme would be cool to
have! Switching the current theme off makes the Neo feel blazingly fast.
If a new theme has less gradients, so be it.


Dates
-----
Needs lots of love everywhere and especially lots of speed improvements.
The rendering of the tables is way too slow.


Anyway, cool work!

Marcus





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