Thread: future NIT form factor - Dpads?
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ragnar is offline ragnar
2008-09-29 , 08:26
Posts: 631 | Thanked: 1,123 times | Joined on Sep 2005 @ Helsinki
#36
Originally Posted by ARJWright View Post
There's probably an easier marketing benefit to hard buttons that would change determined by context than just a flat screen where the haptics in a localized area would be able to move, but that's just something worth playing with over some use cases, and then in real life to see what happens. A case can and should be made to see what happens.

Personally, I'd rather not have a d-pad as it can restrict what a developer might want to do. In the same wise, going with haptics+gestures might not always be optimal as well.

As for what to come next, I'd like to see maemo take a chance with something not done before, hence the post about a folding-haptic/gesture screen design. Something where navigation and input take an approach that is based more on interfacing with the content rather than interfacing with the device to get to the content.
Yes to many of these points.

As far as for the hard keys, the problem with the hard keys really is that they restrict and dictate the design. If you have keys A and B on the side of the screen, designs try to take advantage of them. (It would feel silly not to use them!) If you have a d-pad on the side of the screen, designs try to use them. It has a big effect on the UI design, and it can easily be detrimental if designers are not careful and mindful.

Getting rid of HW keys is very hard. The larger the platform gets, the harder it would be to get rid of hard keys, since then there would be so many solutions and applications already that require the hard keys being there. In theory for a device that works on the touch screen, not requiring hard keys, these limitations do not exist.

I'm not at all a fan of mixing HW key and touch screen usage on a UI. HW keys are good if they have their pre-determined, always known roles. For instance the iPhone Home key, the user knows what it will do and it does it very nicely. If it would done "something" in every app of the device, it wouldn't work. Having small screens on keys is a poor substitute, it just makes people stuck on hard keys, i.e. the "non-direct" approach in the UI.