Monday, October 22, 2007

Letting the UI drive service and application utilization, rather than the other way around

Traditionally the UI has had a subordinate role compared to the mobile applications, i.e. the browser, messenger and media player. This is about to change. The UI is gradually moving from something, hopefully, nice and beautiful, to a strategic differentiator in designing and utilizing all of the functions in the device.

A seamless UI approach to mobile devices implies that there will be no fixed boundaries on how the end-user shall interact with the device. A traditional menu structure may have its advantages for orientation, but a user experience centric approach (so successfully implemented by companies like Apple) plays more into the hands of how we behave. A UI that supports flow and function based user interaction will not tie the user to a specific application, but rather present a logical flow of options; - What do you want to do next?

TAT Cascades re-enforces this paradigm shift with its focus on user and function driven UIs, rather than the traditional application centric silo based approach. The UI will work with smooth transitions between logical functions and invoke the appropriate part of the application service layer. The foundation of TAT Cascades centers on the ability to expose underlying services in a structured and easy accessible way and that the UI Framework is designed in such a way that it through event triggers, defined in XML, can call upon a certain activity, for example editing a picture, without having to start the whole camera application. This way of letting the UI invoke a service, rather than letting the application invoke the UI was not possible in the “old” monolithic way.

TAT’s PhotoRiver solution makes full use of the advantages posed by a UI driven architecture.

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