I Dream of Touch UI
Touch user interfaces can be fun and can sometimes be annoying, but I think they have tremendous potential to enhance productivity because of their ease and expressiveness.
This applies to iOS & Android tablets as much as to the full Windows 8 tabs or a hypothetical mac tab(?). The OS does not matter. Only the increased productivity and expressiveness.
Imagine...
A presenter (professor, pastor, Sunday school teacher) connects her tab to a big screen. Opens a map in Bible Facts. A quick 4 finger pinch open (4 fingers moving toward the four screen corners) gesture puts it in reader mode to minimize distractions. Now she can pan around the map and pinch to zoom to focus on the areas of interest.
Highlights. We need highlights. Reaching to the top edge of the screen, she swipes down from the edge to reveal the quick highlight panel. In a book resource, this might reveal text highlighters, but in this context it shows the screen highlighters, some drawing elements like arrows, etc. (possibly vector based to scale with image?), and the screen pointer used for pointing around the screen. After drawing on screen, she's happy with her artwork and wants to save it for next class. Long press on the image and then drag it off the right edge to save a screen shot or export it.
Next she opens Timeline. Two finger swipe down opens the date/era picker to select a time period (why are eras placed under a menu item titled "Fit"). Pans & pinches to zoom to get a better view (this sort of works now). Too much info. She double taps the screen to open a blank custom timeline and activate customize mode. Now as she taps an event on the full timeline it shows up in the custom timeline until she has the events she's interested in. Now she maximize the custom timeline and focus the class’s attention on just those events. Again, she can save/export by long pressing and dragging off the right edge of the screen.
Images: Maybe Clippings could be extended to contain images from image search or a new document type for images that would allow simple selecting images for a simple slide show. Perform an image search. Touch and drag images into the document. Start the slide show in auto advance mode or swipe left/right to control the flow.
A student in class could swipe up from the bottom edge to open the keyboard and last used note file in a transient pane (with a control to change that file if needed). When selection moves to another resource the transient pane auto closes to gets out of the way.
When reading a resource we could:
- one finger swipe left/right for next/prev page
- two finger swipe left/right for next/prev chapter (or whatever is selected in the Article/Book/Chapter/Verse selector).
- three finger swipe left/right for next/prev parallel resource.
- two finger swipe down for TOC or verse picker
- three finger swipe down for History list
- two finger pinch to zoom for increasing/decreasing text size
- four finger pinch to zoom (four fingers to the four corners) for opening reader mode
Drag down from the top edge to open the quick highlight panel to enter selection/highlight mode. Highlight text or select text and then touch and drag it to a note or clipping.
In a bible, use a four finger pinch open gesture (vertically, two fingers up, two fingers down) to /progressively/ open the inline interlinear.
For those using notes to give presentation or sermon, have a live mode where the text is un-editable and un-selectable. Instead it just pans up and down and has quick markings so they can notate a point after it's been covered, a bad joke not to use again, or a good illustration to save for later.
I could probably go on and on.
I'm just brainstorming as I go. I may have watched too much CSI: Miami. I may not have had enough coffee this morning. But the point I'm hopefully making is that gestures are/can be intuitive, expressive, and huge productivity enhancers.
Comments
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Did you have an Irving Berlin tune in mind when you wrote this post? [:D]
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alabama24 said:
Did you have an Irving Berlin tune in mind when you wrote this post?
No. But now I do and likely won't get it out of my mind all day. [:)]
Actually, It's more a play on the title "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" Androids, Nexus, futuristic. And it's early, so I'm still dreaming of sheep. LOL.
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Any touch screen person, when first encountering Logos4\5, goes to the Help, types in 'gesture' and then scans down for what is available.
That's when you see 'right mouse - hold down'. Finished.
Absent major brain surgery a la Steve Jobs, I don't think mouse developers can escape their mouse'y world. I had MS for mobile for years and 'the tiny-er the better'. When they rolled out their Stevey-wanna-be, you could tell, some mousers were involved hiding in the background.
I'd be thrilled if the Logos mouse developers could at least write Logos for use in a church environment ... maps, timelines, and so forth. Have they ever tried it?
"If myth is ideology in narrative form, then scholarship is myth with footnotes." B. Lincolm 1999.
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Randy, please add your suggestions to this forum. Thanks. http://community.logos.com/forums/t/73581.aspx
Mission: To serve God as He desires.
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