I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my distain for lists as an organizing principle and way of presenting information. Menu lists, to-do lists, grocery lists, buddy lists… I’m not a big fan of the list format; it seems like such a rigid and lifeless way to present information.
There are so many more creative ways to visualize information. Two models I thought of today are the snow globe and the kaleidoscope.
I loved snow globes growing up - their ephemeral, messy, magical quality. What if we could harness the qualities of snow globes as an organizing principle for presenting information on mobile devices? Data floating across the screen…
Kaleidoscopes could be an interesting model to explore, too..
Especially for information that doesn’t necessarily need to be ordered in any specific manner. Sometimes a chaotic view of your data is just what the doctor ordered. Something to spark creativity and a completely unbiased choice in item selection…
perhaps the snowflake….one final goal and various tasks in terms of melting the snowflake to achieve the goal.
the mindmap - an ever changing map of tasks and their relationships that doesn’t necessarily show deadlines but more what is the more intuitive task to move to next, based on the relationship between the current task and those closest you can keep a similar subject or thought flow which could give you a head start in the ‘getting going’ on a new task.
[...] que eu mais gostei até agora foi a idéia do dia 1, que propõe uma nova forma de organização de arquivos. Ao invés dos ícones estarem bonitinhos [...]
Sure, data floating around looks edgy and cool. But what if you need to find a specific Flickr photo, or you need to check a news feed? I don’t want to have to peek at the corner of the screen to make sure I didn’t miss any important information.
Lists may be boring, but they are also impartial. They present all your data in a format that is ideal for quick usage. In your example, why is one particular contact larger than, say, the music app? A list keeps everything in focus, because mobiles simply aren’t smart enough to figure out what’s most important to us.
This interface may be good for bored kids looking for something to do in between facebook, but it is not for people who have to get things done.
@SteveK: I don’t believe Rachel was advocating either model as full-time UI, but rather as idle-time alternatives to screensavers. (Rachel, am I correct in this assessment?)
I rather like the idea of random shards of personal content drifting by when the phone is idle. I’d like it even better if all the shards shown at any moment shared some semantic theme.
How about this? A couple of months from now, suddenly your phone develops a fondness for all the data you collected at UX Week. It’s particularly fond of displaying the Flickr photos that your friends have favorited.
A few days later the phone shifts to your significant other’s birthday in 2006.
As you say, a source of unexpected connections.
I can’t really imagine the kaleidoscope design working as well; too much interference from the side-by-side, overlapping facets, presumably with mismatched graphic and textual content.
One last thought: how do you maintain your privacy when your phone — by design — deliberately dredges up and displays random bits of your life?