Re: future NIT form factor - Dpads?
 

Actually, the d-pad pre-existed the NIT and was originally intended to be a replacement for a mouse/pointing device. The other keys [zoom+][switchview][zoom-] are not conventional function keys, (although the openness of the platform may allow functions to be mapped to the keys). They were specifically designed by Nokia years ago for handheld touchscreen devices (they are placed where the thumb and forefinger rest) and their functions are meant to relate to the small screen size.

some of the comments simply fail to take into account the unigue device characteristics of the NIT. Within the mobile touchscreen category, personally I prefer the functionality focused design of the NIT to the barren touchscreen style of the iphone. If you want an iphone, go buy an iphone; the NIt should aspire to better than the iphone not to imitate it.

Re: future NIT form factor - Dpads?
 

If your only tool is a hammer, then the world looks like a nail.

If you only have a touch screen, then you're forced to solve certain problems in a manner that may not be actually be optimal, nor even close to optimal, for that form of input. For example, virtual keyboards -- a touchscreen implementation for solving the "how do I create text input", yet it's an incredibly poor way to implement that goal.

If the device provides choice, then you have multiple tools for accomplishing a given task, and you can pick which device that best suits that task. Yes, software designers might do a lousy job, but IMO it's better for them to have a choice to make bad decisions than for the user to not have a choice to use the best tool for a given situation. You solve the software designer problem by having well written style guides and suggestions, a well developed set of standard applications which shows the right way to solve the problem on that device, and an on-going effort to push that forward (when none of the apps available do their job according to the style guidelines, make one that does, and thus raises the bar for the app makers, both the ones that want to make that same type of app, and the ones who want to be stylistically compatible with the base-line of the platform).

For NIT designers to complain about poor style consistency, and apps with poor adherence to a given style, they need to have put in the work on putting that infrastructure into place (style guides, rich set of style implementations for app designers to both leverage and compete with, etc.). Where's the solid finger friendly email application? Modest may be better than what was there before, but it's still not something I'd hold up as an example of great finger/touch-screen design. Where's the solid finger friendly PIM suite? Where's the finger friendly web browser? For NIT designers to preach about "we should eliminate hard buttons from the design, for design purity", then they must first be an example of that design purity, not an example of the design problem. Lead from the front, and lead by example.

And, even then, it's still going to come down to "there are times when the best/fastest information input will be typing". Or, because it's an _internet_ tablet, it's going to be using web pages and web apps that were also designed for desktops, and are thus either keyboard focused or have shortcuts that make input much faster with a keyboard. In those cases, not being able to use hard buttons becomes a limitation.

Re: future NIT form factor - Dpads?
 

It's not an either-or. It's a "which is best for a given situation". I have an N810 _and_ a Bluetooth keyboard. Pulling out my iGo while I'm standing on a bus and just want to do a few quick things that involve typing? If I am forced to choose between a virtual keyboard and an external keyboard, I'll instead "think outside the box" and buy a different device. One that suits my needs, instead of forcing me into artificially constrained input mechanisms that don't cover my use cases.

If I'm in a meeting and wanting to take notes, or need to do a LOT of typing, that's when I pull out the iGo.

Choose the best tool for the job. Give your users a rich set of tools to choose from.

Re: future NIT form factor - Dpads?
 

that's kind of my feeling on the whole thing.

thanks for the response to my first thread too everybody :cool:

Re: future NIT form factor - Dpads?
 

If the devices had 5 extra keys on the top, as Ragnar suggested (although in a sarcastic mode I believe), playing Duke Nukem would have been easier on the N800. And if it didn't have the d-pad it wouldn't be possible to play it at all.

Of course this is an application that has simply been recompiled for the N8x0, with very few adjustments. But isn't that how we want things to be? It should be possible to use software that hasn't been specially designed for some futuristic special magic display. We don't want to be limited to Nokia Approved (tm) software. The internet tablets were meant to be flexible, open devices.

Re: future NIT form factor - Dpads?
 

This is why different form factors should exist, so that flexible and open remain constants, and innovation can come from users and developers alike.

Re: future NIT form factor - Dpads?
 

First off, it was Nokia UI designers who came up with the idea of supplementing the small touch screen with a few hard keys, and who led "from the front" that way, keeping that design in the NITs. There was a good early example (7710) of using that design, but it has fallen out of the collective consiousness among the excitement of maemo development.

It is not the NIT designers (at least to my knowledge although I wasn't at the summit) who are preaching about removing hard keys, but a few people on this site (who I am trying to address). My understanding is that they pondered openly about a future, more finger friendly UI, but that does not at all necessitate removal of the hard keys AFAIK.

Re: future NIT form factor - Dpads?
 

I'm curious, do you know who ragnar is?

Re: future NIT form factor - Dpads?
 

I read these, and found myself chuckling at the way they fit neatly into stereotypes. Although as a typically engineer, I find myself more in agreement with (and perhaps beyond) Igor's viewpoint...

Re: future NIT form factor - Dpads?
 

I was replying to one of them who was doing exactly that.

Re: future NIT form factor - Dpads?
 

No, I don't.

Re: future NIT form factor - Dpads?
 

Once you find out you'll be really worried about future of buttons on our tablets :-)

Re: future NIT form factor - Dpads?
 

Adding 2+2, I am already worried... :(

Re: future NIT form factor - Dpads?
 

Hint: Ragnar works on UI design. I met him on a trip to Helsinki once. ;)

Re: future NIT form factor - Dpads?
 

If haptics are integrated with the actual UI widgets, then I suppose that haptics might be a substitute for hardware buttons.

But if haptics are anything like a vibrating version of the current "beep-when-the-stylus-touches-the-screen-even-if-you-missed-the-button-by-three-pixels", then I don't think haptics won't be very much better than what we have now.

Re: future NIT form factor - Dpads?
 

Not quite. The N800 has been out of stock for ages and EOL for a while now. At the moment, there is no choice.

They are? I really must be a mutant. ;) The point is that the paradigm of using hw buttons for zooming is obsolete. As I said, that's one thing that the iPhone UI does really well.

Nobody wants a clone. But dismissing everything that the iPhone does *just because* it's the iPhone is just dumb.

As if slapping on a miniature keyboard with microscopic keys solves that issue ... Personally, I'm faster on a standard SMS "keyboard" (i. e. numpad with three letters per number key) than on a miniature keyboard, because I can touch type on the former but not on the latter. Yet I wouldn't want to type anything substantial on either. For typing, you need a close-to-fullsize keyboard, period.
That's not an option on the NITs, except as an accessory ... so the real question is not how to input text but how to avoid having to input it: bookmarks, history, auto-completion, predictive typing, voice control and/or recognition, gestures, handwriting recognition, haptic screen ...

If you give the platform a keyboard, everyone (the developers most of all) will think "oh, it's got a keyboard so that's alright then" and no shift from the "like a desktop but smaller" UI paradigm will ever take place.

Re: future NIT form factor - Dpads?
 

So you're saying we need to make life miserable for users so they'll invent something to make it easier?!

Re: future NIT form factor - Dpads?
 

So, then, you didn't read the rest of my message that addressed that issue completely? (it's up to the designers to provide style guides and reference applications which conform to those style guides, so that they are setting the bar of expectation of the users, to which 3rd party developers must rise and beat if they want their apps to be successful on the platform)

When Nokia provides those style guides and reference applications, such that you don't need a keyboard to do basic tasks, you don't lose the screen while entering text on a virtual keyboard, and such that developers know what the app ecosystem expects of them, then they can take away the existing UI elements. Not before.

That or they have to do a combination of relegating their device to a particular market segment, designing around that segment, and getting someone who can seduce a crowd the way Steve Jobs does to do the introduction and hype for the device.

Anything else is just going to produce a half-usable device that no one is happy with ... and we'll all end up moving to Android and Pandora (both of which, btw, have keyboards).

(and, android doesn't seem to be having a ton of trouble getting people to develop very touchscreen oriented apps while also delivering a keyboard... I think someone's thesis is flawed...)

Re: future NIT form factor - Dpads?
 

I wouldn't put it this way but I can certainly see great merit in *forcing* people to think outside the conventional mouse+keyboard+screen box of HCI. That just doesn't work on such a small device and no amount of bandaiding on a keyboard will fix that.

Random Ideas:
- The fullscreen version of the virtual keyboard would be nice enough if it were a mostly transparent layer over the otherwise unmodified screen ...
- Adopt the SMS paradigm and put two characters on one key
- Change [shift] into a [capitalize last letter] key
- Change the key layout depending on application.

I fear the ideas of fast text input on a small device and a QUERTY keyboard, virtual or real, are orthogonal.

Re: future NIT form factor - Dpads?
 

I want a few hardware buttons so I don't wear out my touchscreen as it tries in vain to simulate them.

It's almost that simple. ;)

Re: future NIT form factor - Dpads?
 

I did, and it didn't. Style guides completely miss the point. Designing a good UI is hard enough, doing it in advance, for nearly every possible application and on paper is nigh impossibe. But that's exactly what a style guide is.

While there's a few things Nokia could/should be providing, this is not one of them. Style guides exist so that corporate coding drones can say they did it by the book (no offense). Be creative! :)

And none of which are in any way revolutionary. The Android devices look like bog-standard smartphones to me, not like a new class of device at all.

Re: future NIT form factor - Dpads?
 

Well, I'm one of the ones who could easily go Pandora-wise; as for Android, if Google's plans work, there'll be a hundred Android phones covering every possible configuration... I don't see one as a primary device till they get some with high-res screens.

But if people would reject the revolutionary devices in favor of things which are not "in any way revolutionary", perhaps the revolution is not needed or at the least is misdirected.

Re: future NIT form factor - Dpads?
 

[QUOTE=fallenguru;228635]There was a period of time when both co-existed and some people voluntarily chose the 800 over the 810.

Or no opposable thumb? ;) I have gotten used to using the keys on the NIT to zoom without touching the screen. Be careful that what you perceive as an advantage to the iphone isn't because the zoom function is better implemented overall. For example, I do often wish that I could more finely tune the zoom level on the NIT (that disadvantage isn't because of the key though).

I didn't dismiss it out of hand. I'm just don't like it.


A keyboard is an accessory to the desktop computer too you know; it's just that it is expected to be present. I agree with johnkzin that the keyboard is not an either-or proposition from a software perspective (although we didn't see it with the transition from 800 to 810, there are times when it is a physical compromise), and that its presence doesn't necessarily drive design one way or the other. A single desktop word processing app can easily let you cut and paste in a number of ways - you can cut and paste graphically with a mouse, use a function key, select from a drop down menu, or a keyboard shortcut (and probably some others too). How did all those options get there?? Bet I know that the options which use a mouse didn't exist before mice existed.

Re: future NIT form factor - Dpads?
 

Dude!!!
You suck :D

Re: future NIT form factor - Dpads?
 

I want a hardware pause button. When I'm reading a book and listening to music, I want to be able to stop the music with a single key press.

Currently, this is a three step process:

• press the apps/home button
• navigate to media player
• press pause (or spacebar)

A screen-based global pause button would just take away from the reading area of the book. It really should be a hardware button. Although, I suppose a global gesture would also work.

Re: future NIT form factor - Dpads?
 

Hi, a lot of interesting discussion in this thread. :)

I agree with these comments from Johnkzin. Proper UI style documentation is something we are currently missing, and there's really no good excuse for this. For Fremantle we are actively planning to fix the issue, by publishing the style guide and also improving the finger usability of the applications.

Of course a style guide doesn't _dictate_ design: people are still free to develop whatever kind of UI they want. But a good style guide helps developers to create UI's that work well on the device and conform... or take advantage of the learning that users already have from using the other applications on the device.

I've also been talking with Tim Samoff (maemo community council) about how the community could participate in this style guide work, in the beta SDK phase for instance. The assumption is certainly not that it's the job of the community to create the style guide - Nokia has to do it - but people can certainly help by commenting/requesting for clarifications/additions.

Re: future NIT form factor - Dpads?
 

Basically "you're doing it wrong" if you use the touch screen to draw keys that emulate the hard keys. Hard keys basically fall into the "non-direct" approach whereas touch UI's work on more direct approach: "touch this to do something for this".

There are a few areas where the main interaction - be it unfortunately or not - still requires the hard key emulation, the virtual keyboard being the main area. There are 'good' alternative UI's for text input, Shapewriter etc., but they don't really currently have mainstream acceptance, so we cannot completely rely on them.

Re: future NIT form factor - Dpads?
 

As my personal opinions, when creating an UI platform, I believe quite strongly in having designs that work across multiple devices, not thinking only about one device.

Taking HW keys and more specifically the HW keyboard as an example, I'd say that it's good to plan and design so that you can create a Maemo device that works without _requiring_ the existance of a HW keyboard, but that you can also create devices that can have the HW keyboard and can therefore provide better text input with it.

Therefore you can have a "productivity focused device" with a HW keyboard and say a media-consumption device that skips a keyboard for smaller size and/or other features. (These are of course hypothetical device examples.)

That principle should also go for the other keys. If you look at for example some of the latest S60 devices, a few of them have the media playback keys. That's cool for them. It would turn out to be not cool if in the all those devices would have to have these keys in the future, that would seriously limit the design potential of those devices.

Support but don't require.

Re: future NIT form factor - Dpads?
 

Wink, wink! I don't think I'm alone in noticing that the Maemo summit mentioned the need to consider one-handed operation of Maemo devices. The N800/N810 form factors are too big/heavy for one-handed use.

Yep. Good software design always abstracts away the specific I/O hardware.

I mean, even if you know there is a keyboard, you can't assume that it's a US-American keyboard, and some "common" keystrokes might be prohibitively awkward to users from some locales.

Roger.

Re: future NIT form factor - Dpads?
 

Exactly. I hope we will finally have more devices running Maemo at the same time. Having only one device creates unneeded tensions and a lot of compromises is needed and as a result less people are happy.

I am curious how it will work in reality though. Supporting more devices is harder. It was noticeable from little things here and there that OS2008 was designed around N810 and while N800 is supported too it got less testing and less thinking.

Re: future NIT form factor - Dpads?
 

There's some great points here, and some potentially exciting stuff.

So I'm not being funny when I ask this, I genuinely would like to understand how future developments would solve/impact this query - how would one play something like 'blocks' on the nit without a hardware d-pad? (or indeed many other games - i know the device is not aimed at gamers, and I am not one, but I'm sure many like me while away the odd half hour with some or other pointless retro pursuit and would wish to continue with future devices?) :)

Re: future NIT form factor - Dpads?
 

I completely understand.

But as we all know, the community at large is not satisfied with leaving the tablets alone. They want to take them in many directions-- and I for one think that is great.

One of those directions is gaming. Now, we screwed up with the N-gage device, and there really was not a good reason for that. With the tablets, we have a chance to rectify that.

I see no reason why we can't learn from the amazing success of the Nintendo DS Lite and incorporate a few gaming controls into the tablets. Gaming, as many of us are aware, is the single biggest driver of platform sales in general these days. In fact, to me the most compelling iPhone ads are the new ones showing just what cool games are available for it (I really like the one where you shake the device to roll dice).

If done properly, the gaming controls would perform other functions when gaming wasn't the intended use.

While I am really attracted to the sleek, simple look of the iPhone, I also think it's unnecessarily limited by its singular focus on the touchscreen. And while that's personal preference, I'm not the only one feeling that way.

Way, way back I proposed here that we have at least 3 tablet form factors at any given time-- one of them focused on media, one on business, and one on gaming. I still feel that way, and don't understand why we're not there yet. Neither do many current and potential customers...

Re: future NIT form factor - Dpads?
 

Gaming is very cool. I personally believe especially in casual gaming for a device like this. The "hard-core games" will still go and be developed towards gaming optimized devices like the game consoles or handheld consoles like PSP. Also of course networked games, for a networked device.

Casual games, where the barrier of entry is much smaller, they can be learned and enjoyed quicker and are more suited for a mobile use context - i.e. temporal usage, on and off.

Going "full out" as a gaming focused device is a risky strategy, though. Take something like the Gizmondo as an example. You need to get the whole package. Gizmondo had ... gaming optimized hardware. (I think we even have one of those devices still somewhere on our shelves around.) And you could do some other stuff with that device also.

But nobody really bought it. Of course for many reasons. Because the games were not there, because for the "other functions" it wasn't then really good (because of the gaming keys, device layout etc.) I don't really believe that you can do both at the same time. Making the device good for gaming will make it worse for other functions.

Games for Linux is a chicken and an egg -problem, and also a commercial problem. Development takes lots of money, the market isn't there, and converting to Linux is far from trivial. I remember reading this discussion a few days ago: http://braid-game.com/news/?p=364

But then again, especially web-based casual games (platform-independent games) run on multiple platforms. I think supporting those is a very good idea.

Re: future NIT form factor - Dpads?
 

You can't really use Gizmondo as an example-- there was criminal fraud embedded in their business model, so the device (however cool) was immaterial. It was never going anywhere.

And I know the handheld gaming market can be a pain, but somehow Nintendo and Sony have succeeded despite the barriers. Do they have special magic that no one else does? ;)

EDIT: Oh, and I am a big believer in Flash games (addicted to Dicewars on my N810), and believe we are missing the boat there.

Re: future NIT form factor - Dpads?
 

Nintendo and Sony have done decades of painstaking work in building up the developer connections, markets, networks, knowledge and understanding about gaming and gamers. It's - nothing is impossible, but it is extremely hard to enter that market competitively.

Looking at the desktop consoles, the Xbox is a good example of what it took from Microsoft to enter to the market dominated by Sony and Nintendo. The Xbox division lost 4 billion dollars in its first four years, and that was just to get to the same level. That was their special sauce. :) They did very good work there certainly. Gaming needs the gaming platforms, and they need the critical mass. The only gaming platform available to mobile devices _right now_ that has the critical mass is the web-based platform.

On the other hand, for that I don't fear missing the boat. As long as the "boat" is a web-based platform and not specifically tied to any device or solution provider, anyone can board the boat and get the passengers in when the cruising business would become sufficiently... - now this metaphor is getting too far :)

Re: future NIT form factor - Dpads?
 

That would be good. I like that. Gaming is difficult, we shouldn't equate the D-pad with gaming as it also has many other case uses.

Re: future NIT form factor - Dpads?
 

No worries, after a few classes from Ken Kutaragi, Ari Jaaksi will be able to proudly stand before crowds and proclaim that tablet users will happily work more hours to purchase an N900.

Re: future NIT form factor - Dpads?
 

LOL... amazing how badly Sony did misfire with the PS3. But I was just talking about the PSP. :p

Re: future NIT form factor - Dpads?
 

What I mean by "missing the boat" is underestimating the Flash potential, and neglecting to bundle several Flash games with the tablets.

Re: future NIT form factor - Dpads?
 

I know, but with Sony's "special magic" brought into the discussion and folks worrying about the price of the so-called N900 in other threads, I just couldn't resist.