The official project for the replacement of the SkyOS GUI, the SkyOS GUI Design Contest, is now underway. You may view the current submissions at the website here. If you would like to contribute a design, please read the instructions on the first page of the site. Submissions will be accepted until September 8th. At that point, the designs will judged in an open community vote. The top 3 designs will move on, and will be judged by the designers, the community, and Robert (creator of SkyOS). The new GUI will appear in SkyOS v5.0. Update: The site’s earlier bandwidth problems have been solved.
We all know the best UIs come from sci-fi b-movies… you know where the alien is an actor wearing a gorilla suit with a diving helment.
Any advanced UI, therefore, must accept totally random keystrokes, resulting in whatever the user intended, not what they typed. You must also be able to talk to the screen or the mouse. The OS must answer audibly as well. In the even that you are outside a window, the OS must read you lips through some red lensed camera.
I suggest that the screen show pictures while typing to demonstrate that it understands what you want, no matter what you type. When it wants input, display a red lense or a mouse. All output should be through the speakers or a squished ticker tape on the bottom. Did I mention that the operating system should argue with you, or at least contradict you?
In the end, the OS will probably be lame… it will have icons, menus and windows… using a mouse and keyboard for input only… probably only using the speakers for music or movie soundtracks.
I designed the K Complex desktop [ http://www.nathanpalmer.com/skyos/album14 ] yesterday as an excuse to get the idea of hyperbolic interfaces out there. The basic idea is to curve the display space so that a vertical scrollbar is unnecessary, making navigation (in theory) quicker and more natural (just click on the space and drag it around). In the description for the GUI I mistakenly said this eliminates the horizontal scrollbar, which is possible, but that’s not what I did in the mock up. Please ignore the useless directory structure, it is just what I was using for usability trials for my thesis [ http://kcomplex.com/ext/research_thesis.pdf ]. I also tried to make heavy use of screen edges to make it quicker to find targets with the pointer.
isn’t that the same way that gamespy presents the game list?
I have used SkyOS. Not extensively, but I’ve tried it out and given it as much a try a non-developer should give it. My design isn’t intended to be accurate in any way or form, and why should it?
Think of my mockup as pseudocode. It doesn’t work, it’s not intended to work, nor is it polished. The file structure shown in that screenshot is just something I threw in there for show.
I haven’t used gamespy in the last couple of years, so I’m not familiar with this. There are likely many implementations of devices similar to the hyperbolic interface that fall within the focus+context problem area that I’m not aware of. Icon zooming, such as in OS X’s dock is an example. The hyperbolic interface is specific in that it guarantees that the entire information space will fit within the display space. Maybe gamespy does this, unfortunately I don’t know. A seminar presentation I did with other examples is here: [ http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~akolliop/files/ped/ ]
i had a while ago was to basically keep all user files in a flat namespace (by appearance) but have them all nested in reality by different qualia, like file type, etc., and you search for stuff by using filters like iTunes, you live search for the metadata that matches what you’re looking for… by date created, modified, make playlists… I definitely think thats a very quick interface, I know it works GREAT for mp3s 🙂