UIST'09: Integrated videos and maps for driving directions

I love how they can choose a camera angle after they filmed it because they recorded it panoramically.

Some great ideas here.

Mag+ (Bonnier R&D concept video)

Elegant button free mockup. The designer in me cheers!

Great insight into how we consume magazines.

"...They can be completed. They are very knowable. That one can read through it and finish it. And have a sense that they've consumed an editorial package, without neccessarily the kind of endless infinitely expanding RSS-feed, for example, where there really is no end."

/SLincoln

Beyond the touchscreen, finally the future is here!

With help of TAT UI technology in combination with leading edge hardware providers, we at TAT we constantly strive to push the limits for mobile device user experiences, and showcase the future trends for user interaction. Today, with the unveiling of the Fuse concept device, we see the birth of a new generation of multi sensor devices, beyond the current generation of touchscreen phones. TAT together with partners (Synaptics, Texas Instruments, Immersion and Alloy), for the first time shows an integrated range of multiple interface technologies— including multi-touch capacitive sensing, haptic feedback, force, grip, accelerometer and proximity sensing all brought together in a fully OpenGL|ES 2.0 hardware accelerated 3D User Interface.

Using TAT Cascades we have implemented a user interface bringing all these modalities together to tackle some of the challenges of current-generation touchscreen phones by on-the-go users, namely the difficulty of single-handed usage and the need to look at the screen. The Fuse’s sensing technologies surrounds the entire device. E.g. grip sensing is achieved via force and capacitive touch sensors on the sides of the phone, and it also introduces for the first time 2D navigation from the back of the phone, enabling single-handed control without obstructing the display.

The output feedback technologies include next-generation haptic effects and ground breaking 3D user interface effects. The TI OMAP3630 platform has been put to the test with the implementation of a dynamic UI design, highlighting the sensor control mechanisms using realtime OpenGL|ES 2.0 shader effects for things like light sources, dynamic colors, reflections, shadows, animated 3D meshes and much more.

The movie below shows a couple of the UI mechanism and effects, and the fully functional device with all sensors and haptic actuators will be available to try out for the first time at CES 2010. Don’t miss it!

TAT makes business apps useful on Android

Making a complex desktop internet application useful on a mobile phone is not easy.

QlikView knows this and have turned to TAT for the design and technology expertise required to meet their high demands on usefulness when mobilizing their popular business intelligence application QlikView. The Android version will be their first implementation using TAT Cascades, and it seems QlikView may in turn be the first ever business intelligence application to launch on Android.



Using TAT Cascades on top of Android makes it possible to implement an application design that does not compromise, neither on QlikView’s brand values nor on the application functionality or usefulness. And after implementation on Android, scaling to other operating systems or form factors is made easy by the functionality provided in TAT Cascades.

The First Else

This seems nice. I like how you can quick access the content of the application with a simple sideways gesture. Looks kind of like a widget on demand, or a peek preview.

More here.

More info here >>

Everywhere you go, always take the weather with you

Desktop widgets have reached hundreds of millions of users in recent years - OS X Dashboard, Windows Gadgets, Yahoo Widgets and tons of web widgets have all helped the uptake of lightweight, single purpose applications that run in a limited screen estate.

The mobile space has - as many times before - been inspired by the desktop and a number of widget standards are out there; JIL, W3C, Android to name a few.

From a design point of view, widgets are often fun to create. They should do one thing very well, compared to full blown apps that have tons of edge cases that take months to design and specify. Designing a widget is a perfect mobile interaction design 101 task, a bit like when architecture students design a chair during their first semester.

So how come there are so many badly designed widgets out there?

Consider the OS X Dashboard weather widget. It looks great and tells you the weather right now, but most people are able to look out the window to see if it's sunny. Sure, knowing the outside temperature in the morning helps you decide what to wear, but should it cover a majority of the widget area?

Wouldn't it be wiser to spend more on the upcoming weather and less on the current weather? You can expand the OS X widget to show the upcoming weather as well, but it’s still using half the widget area to show the current conditions. And that’s still using numbers instead of graphics ot show the temperatures.

Doesn’t Apple know that an analogue (bars) representation rather than a digital one (digits) makes it easier to compare temperature between days?

In a mobile context, spending a lot of screen estate on the current weather is even worse because
a) Screens are small and every pixel counts

You’re more likely to be outside and thus don’t need a widget to tell you it’s too cold

We really love what HTC has done with Hero and their awesome Sense UI. The visual design is flawless and they have really taken Android beyond vanilla. But still, we never use the weather widgets. The small one doesn’t show any forecast, and the big one steals too much space.

We are currently in the midst of designing a suite of Android widgets and have put some thought into the ultimate weather widget, that according to us should:


• Emphasize upcoming weather rather than current
• Offer short term forecasts at a glance (should I bring an umbrella today?)
• Offer long term forecasts with minimum effort (what's the best day this week to go mountainbiking?)
• Stay compact unless specifically interacted with
• Be beautiful and give an aha/wow/smile

Here’s what we came up with:

A compact mode that shows the current and upcoming weather with the same priority. Temperature is color coded to give information at a glance:

An extended mode that shows the weather with a bar representation so that you can easily see how it’s going to vary the following days:

How do you get between these modes?

The widget is 3D so you can swipe to rotate between the modes.For some extra love we’ve added physics, making it even more playful:

Another thing we’re experimenting with is more exotic input methods. Here you blow into the microphone to switch from temperature to wind information:

TAT goes retro with an anaglyphic UI

Remember those nice glasses from the 80’s? Well guess what - now you can use them on your next mobile UI as well.







So if you have a pair of red-green glasses laying around, put them on and enjoy the cool 3D effect in the anaglyphic version of our previously released RedDish demo below – all powered by our astonishing UI framework; TAT Cascades.
























Of course these types of glasses won’t be needed for the new wave of stereoscopic 3D experiences, so stay tuned for more 3D UIs by TAT.



What is anaglyphics?
Anaglyph images are made up of two superimposed color layers that are offset with respect to each other to produce a depth effect. Usually the main subject is in the center, while the foreground and background are shifted laterally in opposite directions. When viewed through 2-color glasses, each eye perceives a slightly different picture. The visual cortex of the brain fuses these into perception of three dimensions.

How to build a coverflow on Android in just 5 minutes

Using TAT Cascades for Android, Fredrik Berglund shows how easy it is to build an attractive coverflow UI on Android in just five minutes, and have it running on a device.


NOTE: Programming section is five minutes, but fast forwarded to 3 minutes

With TAT Cascades for Android and TAT Motion Lab, Fredrik has a really flexible toolset that allows him to check performance directly on target, change design direction at anytime and create a prototype that shows a UI concept with great performance. Working with TAT Cascades makes it possible to actually sketch on device.

Why create a concept movie when you can create a working prototype in the same amount of time?


Did you know this about TAT Cascades for Android?

• TAT Cascades enables the Android framework to be a modern architecture not only to come on par with today's high end UI’s but also to go beyond.

• TAT Cascades provides next generation UI driven approach rather than the programmatic UI in Android

Benefits:
• CTS compliant pre-integration on Android
• Using hardware acceleration to its full extent
• Bleeding-edge user experience, with full support 3D in the UI
• Rapidly scale your Android implementation across other operating systems, such as Windows Mobile, Symbian etc.