Progress update on kiosk UI design

[tona monjo]

Hello kiosk designers,

Both your proposal and all the process that has driven you to the "flatland"
(part of it I've seen at the design meetings), are really amazing and
innovative.

I think that *flatland* it's a bright idea, specially having in mind that
kiosks are used by all kind of users, and the interface intuitiveness
becomes, more than ever, a primary requirement.

My only concern -and, as I've understood in design meetings, is also yours-
is the amount of space that the path can take on the screen. I fact, I think
that *flatland* is not far from the textual breadcrumb. The difference,
besides its graphic treatment, is that it's not based on the architecture of
the application, but on the steps the user has done.

In this sense, I wonder if it wouldn't be more clear to the user to have the
bubbles ordered from left to right (as he's used to), and to use the same
size for all the bubbles. This way, the bubbles would occupy a single row,
and the rest of the screen would remain free for the contents.

On the other hand, I also wonder what would happen when the number of steps
that the user has done increases beyond what can be displayed on the screen.




Stunning work!!

Tona






On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 10:59 PM, James William Yoon <james.yoon at utoronto.ca
> wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> Over the past couple of months, we've been working on a number of different
> UI ideas for the DIA kiosk. For those unfamiliar with the kiosk goals, you
> can find an overview of them here:
> http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Kiosk+design+overview -- in a
> nutshell, the kiosk serves as an index of pre-authored tours, which cut
> across different galleries, and may produce a printout for visitors to carry
> with them.
>
> You can check out the sort of ideas we've been playing with here:
> http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Kiosk+design%2C+draft+5
>
> Our latest UI idea introduces a fresh, new interaction behavior. It
> revolves around displaying the cumulative path of a user's experience, and
> creating visually salient relationships between content. Instead of going
> from screen-to-screen (a la web experience), we're proposing flattening out
> the hierarchy of screens onto a single plane. And because everything is
> flattened out onto a single plane, more screen real estate is a necessity of
> sorts for readability, and so we're thinking of this UI as fitting on a
> largish display (say, 40").
>
> You can see sketches of that particular UI idea here:
> http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Draft+5+sketches+-+Flatland
>
> The "flatland" (aka "bubble bobble land", aka Draft 5.C) UI has a number of
> interesting advantages over conventional UIs:
> * Disorientation of where one is in the scheme of things is minimized or
> eliminated because the entire experience path is presented
> * The interface complexity is built by the user as they progress along
> their path of choices; it's not thrown at them all at once
> * The interface is highly scalable (adding content poses little difficulty
> because of the extra screen real estate) and flexible
> * It's playful and encourages exploration
> * The navigation is more intuitive, spatial, and tangible, and less
> conceptual. For instance, there's no back button because the user can simply
> tap on the previous screen in his/her path
> * Because the entire path is presented and disorientation is minimized,
> other users can pick up from where another user left off--there's no need to
> start from "Home" all the time
>
> We're now working towards digitizing and iterating on these ideas.
>
> In addition to this overarching interaction behavior concept, we've been
> working on compiling kiosk accessibility considerations and discussing how
> to ensure our UIs are accessible. Notes on these are found here:
> * Accessibility considerations:
> http://wiki.fluidproject.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=12616031
> * Tactile/haptic & audio navigation:
> http://wiki.fluidproject.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=12911258
>
> As always, any thoughts and feedback on the work we're up to is welcome.
> Once we have some solid wireframes going, we'll have a walkthrough session
> for everyone to take part in (developers especially).
>
> Cheers,
> James
>
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>


-- 
Tona Monjo
Disseny d'interficies | Diseño de interfaces | Interface design
http://www.tonamonjo.com
T (+34) 654 402 387
Skype: tona.monjo
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