I understood your concept, but I can see some flaws in it, with the most important ones I found so far being:
- Settings, data and applications are mixed up which decreases the user's certainity in using the software.
- There's a lot of unneccessary redundancy of redundant objects which are spread across the interface redundantly (i.e. not a good thing).
- It's not crystal clear what part of the interface is fulfilling what function.
- Two touches for switching to a desktop are too many. People would just be swiping across the desktops most of the time, so the switcher bar would be more of an annoyance to most people (slowing down the process of opening the drawer), which is something you do not want to happen.
I once created
a user interface similar to yours and encoutered similar problems. First of all, I'd like to note that I have not implemented anything about it and am only conceptualizing the idea. Please have a look at
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/50747-appstore-look/page__view__findpost__p__793248 (In case anyone wants to use the first picture from that link as a wallpaper, there are
two versions of that picture with which zaxxon's default taskbar will not cover parts of the Pandora logo.) By reading the information therein you find that it once was meant to be a PND manager like software much like an "App store". There are some
key ideas which are important to that "beauty-get" concept, which are that it:
- ...should be well suited for finding new games.
- ...has to have as few perceivable loading times as possible and be responsible at all times.
- ...must enable developers to offer a lot of data related to their game/application without stressing the internet connection and/or server.
- ...has to have a very good information per interaction ratio.
- ...must be fun to use and not at all confusing while having lots of power user features.
That concept as displayed behind the link provided above is not what you talked about, but it has since become very similar. I had already canceled that project, however some months ago I continued to develop the concept because I wanted to transform it from a PND store into "That thing you toggle to when you're in xfce and press the Pandora button" (for lack of a better term, a "pandora center" if you will). I call it "metamenu". For that, just like you I thought about
ways to implement menus and "desktops" to combine the various functions, but I soon found that that can't be the right solution because it lowers the information/interaction ratio and confuses the user (which would have violated some of the important key ideas provided above).
Instead of using "desktops" or categories I now use "filter buttons" (which are basically buttons you can toggle, each of them representing a regular expression that gets applied to the list of applications/games based on properties like "application type", "game genre", "rating value", "is favorite", "name", "is installed" etc.). I found this concept to be a good thing because neither does it have the main problem associated with categories ("Which category does this application fit into best?") nor the main problem associated with tag-based menus (perceived clutter which leads to confusion and less confidence, thus violating the key ideas). This solution is easy to use while providing additional function for advanced users by enabling them to create their own filter buttons. That purple bar on the top can be opened like a drawer and contains the filter buttons (along with settings), making its function clear. This solution still has its drawbacks, I'm aware of that and am working on it. Also, remember that the picture I shared with you is work in progress and doesn't reflect the current status (for which I don't have any mockups since it's all in my head).
Another thought I would like to share hoping that it's valuable for another project is that
I see keeping the "big xfce desktop" as being of high importance, since the Pandora is more of a tiny netbook than a typical gaming console. Following that idea, to make users become confident in using the Pandora and avoid confusion it's important to NOT induce epic redundancy in terms of functionality into xfce/"pandora center" and instead put every function where it belongs. So for the metamenu concept to work, I also saw the need to get a detailed idea about what kind of Pandora usage scenario should belong to the "big xfce desktop" and what kind of usage scenario should belong to metamenu. Here is a rough translation of a text which explains the idea in short:
Christoph.K said:
I'm also occasionally contemplating about how to best implement media player, webbrowser etc. on a Pandora (I love finding solutions which exceed the limits of a given system, and developing for devices with a known screen resolution has always fascinated me). Continuing the idea of metamenu, the question would be where to put for instance a media player: would it be better to fit a media player into metamenu or should it belong to the "big xfce desktop" with just an adjusted user interface so it's easier to use with the small touchscreen? To answer that question you can ask yourself another question: "Is this a Pandora specific user experience?"
For instance, a webbrowser would not be a Pandora specific user experience since you can get one on every "big" computer in a similar fashion. Therefore, for a webbrowser it would be better to adjust its user interface and build it into the xfce desktop instead of metamenu. Another example: A media player also is NOT a Pandora specific user experience, you can easily have something similar on a "big" computer. A software dedicated to finding and surfing through YouTube videos fullscreen though could be made into a Pandora-specific user experience, since on a "big" computer it's easier to just surf onto YouTube using a webbrowser (whereas with a Pandora, it isn't), so that'd go into metamenu. Other examples for Pandora specific user experiences could be an emulator management menu or an appstore for Pandora specific content.
Source:
http://forum.gp2x.de/viewtopic.php?p=139628#p139628 (German language link)
I also explained this idea to other members of the German community, and some of them contributed some additional ideas and thoughts (like for instance the idea to simply put installed applications and installable applications into a single list and enable the user to "insta-play" a not yet installed application). I'm still working on that concept occasionally. However, I don't have a Pandora yet so neither can I evaluate some usability thoughts nor implement anything (I don't implement blindly for a device I don't have). I also can't know how many other things I'll have to do when I have my Pandora and what things will get high priority, so for now better assume that metamenu won't get implemented since it would need a good amont of resources (most notably, a LOT of time). I'm writing this text so the ideas don't go straight to the idea bin, hopefully other project(s) can benefit from what I wrote above.
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I would definitely support them in switching to lxde, however I don't think that is the case.
According to Ed, DJWillis had tried using lxde, but nothing ran quite as well on the Pandora as xfce4 did (German language link).
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