Previewing the new Windows 8 User Interface (Video)

 Technology  1 Response »
Jun 022011
 

This first video of Windows 8 – Building “Windows 8″ – is a series of videos over the next few months showcasing the new features of Windows 8. In this video, it shows the first look of the new Windows 8 user interface (UI) which covers the following features:

  • Fast launching of apps from a tile-based Start screen, which replaces the Windows Start menu with a customizable, scalable full-screen view of apps.
  • Live tiles with notifications, showing always up-to-date information from your apps.
  • Fluid, natural switching between running apps.
  • Convenient ability to snap and resize an app to the side of the screen, so you can really multitask using the capabilities of Windows.
  • Web-connected and Web-powered apps built using HTML5 and JavaScript that have access to the full power of the PC.
  • Fully touch-optimized browsing, with all the power of hardware-accelerated Internet Explorer 10.
  • New “Thumbs” keyboard layout.

Look at that smooth buttery scrolling and several physics “bounce”. It really looks like nice merger of the Windows Phone 7 UI into the new Windows 8 UI. I would definitely love to see some of the new UI trickle back to Windows Phone 7. Thumbs up for creating a great user experience with the new Windows 8. Maybe Microsoft finally gets it. I can’t wait to get my hands on Windows 8 in September.

Multi-touch needs new ways of thinking

 User Experience  2 Responses »
Dec 182009
 

For those who hear me talk about multi-touch and how we need to rethink new ways away from traditionally what we know as a screen and interacting using a single point, 10/GUI is a concept I felt focuses on what works and fully leverages on it, what doesn’t and provides a solution for it. Generally, on the hardware side of things, a touchpad is the way to go for multi-touch surfaces instead of a multi-touch screen. But what I’ve always been complaining about is that our current way of dealing with User Interfaces has been so centric around a single point touch that we’re trying to refit new multi-touch capabilities and concepts into an old single point touch interface, which I think is ridiculous. 10/GUI conceptualizes and makes multi-touch native to manipulating the User Interface. Yet, I felt we can do more in terms of User Interface concepts and just let our whole single point centric preconceptions be forgotten. For once, let us rethink everything from icons to menus to buttons and try to break away from the whole single point dictatorship and free ourselves into a multi-touch paradigm of interacting with our computer. What do you think of 10/GUI?

10/GUI from C. Miller on Vimeo.