Minority report style interfaces in the real world!

 

 

 

 

We are proud to show yet another amazing product showcasing our software. This next generation gesture based kiosk was implemented using the You I Labs framework for next generation user interfaces:

http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/21/inwndow-outdoor-minority-report-ads/

 

 

 

 

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Why Adobe Failed

After reading the techcrunch blog Why Adobe Failed I felt compelled to speak up.

As a start-up in the Mobile UI marketplace, we have never seen the Adobe Flash player as a viable competitor but have always had to justify our stance. Finally, Adobe agrees that Flash is not the right technology for mobile. Especially in this post-iPhone world where performance is king and ease of content creation is secondary.

For years prior to the iPhone device, companies unknowingly convinced themselves that convenience is more valuable than user experience. Letting the designer have full creative control outweighed the overall performance of the resulting app. Vector graphics are a large part of Flash, which makes it easier to scale assets to different resolutions and screen sizes. Of course vector graphics are very expensive to render in real time and are difficult to hardware accelerate. Action Script, the Flash script language is even slower, 4000 times slower than C code.
The problem was ignored and pushed to the engineering teams to solve. Hundreds of millions of dollars were wasted in engineering efforts to fix Flash for mobile.

In essence, Flash made content creation easier therefore it saved money in the production of assets and streamlined the app development process. I agree that it’s a great story, but the legacy technology Flash was built on was not made for mobile and like many desktop technologies it can’t be retrofitted to work in a battery-constrained environment. It could never live up to the hype. It was way too slow, crashed too often and was extremely CPU hungry, leaving little power left over for other critical tasks like answering a phone call.

The content story remains sound, but calls for a new technology built from the ground up for this post-iPhone era. The designer tool chain has also changed from products like Adobe Flash to Adobe After Effects, or motion-based video tools, to mock up gestures and other interaction behaviours with 2D and 3D animations and transitions. If you want to learn more, check out this Prezi as it speaks to bridging the gap between UX designers and developers.

Today’s mobile chipsets provide a host of technologies that if used correctly can provide the device makers with PC-level performance without depleting your battery in an hour.
In contrast to the Adobe news, today ARM announced their latest GPU chipset the T658. It’s a quad core GPU moving toward 8 cores by 2015 and offers GPU power for functions beyond graphics processing using the Khronos Group’s OpenCL standard; it crunches other non-graphical data allowing your CPU cores to do what they do best.

To be competitive in this market you need to harness the full power of all the CPU and GPU cores available. If you’re not leveraging your chipset to the fullest, you’re wasting your money and watering down the user’s experience.

 

Don Liberty

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Nokia Unveils Windows Phone 7 Lumia Devices

 

Yes, the first Nokia devices powered by Microsoft have been unveiled.

 

For me, after living in the mobile ecosystem for over 10 years it’s a strange day to see these two companies come together after a decade long dog fight for the smartphone market. Of course times have changed and while they fought, Google managed to steal the market out from under them.

Nokia, in an effort to get back on top of the smartphone game – a market they practically invented, befriended their long-time nemesis; Microsoft. It sounds like a cheesy Hollywood script, two superpowers join forces to take on a new foreign threat. Strangely, I find myself rooting for Nokia, the underdog, and looking forward to their comeback like Mickey Rourke in “The Wrestler.”

Will it happen? Will these new devices mark Nokia’s comeback like Android did for Motorola?
Since the initial announcement of Nokia partnering with Microsoft it’s has been a rather slow start. But today’s debut is a step in the right direction. Nokia seems to have nailed the industrial design at least for the larger of the two devices, the Lumia 800.

It looks remarkably like the recently announced N9 that sported their old Meego OS. At least they were able to recoup their investment in the N9 hardware. Incidentally, engadget loved the N9 hardware almost as much as the iPhone4s.

But is a great industrial design enough?

Nokia is on an even playing field with all other Microsoft Phone 7 licensees. Sure, maybe they get a head start with their strategic partnership but is that really enough to set them apart? Consumers no longer get the Nokia experience; they get the Microsoft experience running on Nokia hardware.

Nokia makes great hardware and historically had to do so with higher margins than their peers. I hope they can continue this trend since they are now living in the margin world. Unlike Apple, who can command a 200% + margin, Nokia will have to compete with other Phone 7 OEM’s and will be lucky to yield 30%.

OK, I’m biased, but for Nokia to knock it out of the park and for me to consider buying another one of their devices, they have to impress me with the Nokia experience. I can get a Phone 7 device from a list of other OEMs – Samsung, HTC, LG, etc. Nokia, with their strategic partnership needs to make Phone 7 their own. Put their flavour into the mix and make it stand out. They need Phone 7 apps and ecosystem but they also need to create their own identity with a signature user interface.

I’m still rooting for them in the long run and I’ll pick up a Lumia 800 when it’s released.
But I sincerely hope their comeback lasts longer than Mickey’s.
I was not a fan of his Iron Man 2 performance – Ouch!

Don Liberty

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Mobile Sees the Light – Out from PC’s Shadow

YOUi Labs is quickly approaching its 4th year of operation and I look back on the changes in the market and draw some interesting conclusions. The mobile world has been overshadowed by its big brother, the PC, since its inception. 2011 is the first year mobile phones will outsell PCs and also a chance for those of us living in the mobile world to consider the impact of having followed in PC’s footsteps for all these years.

This golden age of mobile certainly owes its rocket packs and tanks of fuel to Steve Jobs (1955-2011) for making mobile devices not only mainstream but even the preferred method of interacting with technology. However, Steve could only have done what he did by dropping much of the hardware abstraction, open standards, and excess baggage the PC/Windows has been dragging around with it. You don’t have to be a math whiz to know that PCs are now 1000 times more powerful than they used to be, but they are hardly 50% more accessible. A failure no matter which technology end-user you ask.

Clearly this flat, high-performance, maximized use of hardware is at the core of what we build here, and we started by throwing away all the PC software architectures and acquired some of the fastest rendering IP in the world. We then did the same to the UI framework we have built over the past three years, freeing ourselves from the PC shadow but still embracing all the latest user interface innovations.

The other change I have seen in the past few years that makes mobile even more unlike the PC world is that games are what drive people to upgrade their PC. Even Intel and Microsoft know you don’t need 100M polygons per second and four CPUs to surf the web or write an email. However, the only games making money in mobile are simple puzzle games that work on nearly any device (BTW: check out the beta of Number Cruncher http://flicksoftware.com/2011/10/number-cruncher-2-0-for-blackberry-beta-is-now-open/, cool game and still free). So what is driving the dual-core mobile devices, with soon-to-be Dual-GPUs through openCL and openCV? User interfaces. In fact the UIs on mobile devices outperform most PCs that run at many many times the power consumption and CPU speeds.

At YOUi Labs we started out focused on a wide variety of hardware platforms, enabling gesture or iPhone-like experiences on nearly any device. However, 2011 has been the year of high-end hardware for us. All of our projects closed in 2011 are on the latest hardware from the top hardware vendors and we are generating 70, 80, even 120 frames per second UIs with full physics engine effects, and smooth easing animations to create realistic, authentic, and intuitive user interfaces. Users have become so critical of a UI that nearly any slowdown results in instant frustration. We have to stream content in a background thread and prioritize the motion of UI even over displaying content. These are even more complex issues that the video game companies need to deal with, and they have the benefit of only displaying content they carefully created. The challenges of a next gen mobile UI are daunting, and I look forward to seeing the boundaries pushed even further into 2012.

I wish I could get into greater detail about some of our cool projects, but for now I can say keep any eye out for some amazing devices at CES in Vegas and MWC in Barcelona. Debuting in the next 3-4 months, some of the hottest ones will be YOUiLabs-powered devices.

Jason

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Masters of User-Immersion: User Interfaces in Video Games

Have you ever noticed how every new video game has a new menu system? Whether its Halo or Half Life, Left 4 Dead or COD, they all employ dedicated unique menu systems. Even sequels seem to get caught up in the redesign-of-the-menu-system paradigm. Whether the game has a simple list of basic options, ‘Start New Game’ etc., or an elaborate and immersive menu, the fact remains an old menu system can’t be used because it makes the user feel like the game is old! The newer the game feels, the more excited the user gets about the potential experience. Imagine if every new game – from every company – used the exact same menu. After all, most of the required options are the same: Starting new games, loading old ones, changing inputs, etc. Truth be told, there is not a lot of variance for the most part, but if they all used the same method it would soon become a dry, boring, unappealing part of the user experience.

Let’s think about that for a second. The purpose of a game menu is simply to start players as quickly and painlessly as possible. If the user gets frustrated, or even bored, while trying to get a new game going, their overall impression will be reduced regardless of the playability of the game. But why would it matter with sequels? Or even different games from the same source? Well, it does matter. There is a certain magic to making the menu flow with the feel of the game – immerse the player early and keep them entertained.

It would seem that the gaming companies are ahead of the ‘user experience’ curve, moreso than most of the devices they run on. Given the large number of new devices – tablets, super-phones and the like currently inundating the market, the outstanding question should be: How are they differentiating the user interface to entice the user and reduce frustration?

Case in point – Sony tried this with the Xperia Android phone. Sure, it was just another Android-based smartphone, but with custom applications to give a new user interface experience it was able to differentiate from the crowd. Of course, it only applied to a small subset of the interface and once exhausted, the user is reverted back to the Android standard interface, totally ruining the experience.

What does all this mean? Simply stated, user’s crave new exciting experiences with minimum frustration and confusion.

Hardware companies need to learn from the video game community. After all, their business has surpassed even Hollywood these days. Obviously they must be on to something good. If a new Android tablet was to be released tomorrow with a wild, fun, custom user interface that fully immersed the user it would be a top seller in the market, regardless of the hardware it uses. If these companies want to differentiate in today’s market they need to learn from the masters of user-immersion: Make the interface stand out and the device will too.

 

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OS & UI 2.0 Evolution

The online experience has been evolving steadily since the early days of the internet. Website designers used to populate their sites with their own static content such as images and text in an attempt to keep viewers and increase traffic. In the modern era of Web 2.0, site owners are mainly shepherds of the flock of content mostly provided by their audience. YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace… the list goes on. The most popular sites on the internet in modern times are simply keepers of user-supplied information.

As we look at the evolving user interface experience, both on desktop computers and mobile devices, one can’t help but think of how this trend will apply itself to operating systems and applications. Almost all users already change the look and feel of their devices and computers with personal flair; many even download applications that provide more flexibility in the content they can use, such as desktop gadgets or custom home screens.

Perhaps the trend in user interfaces needs to take on a new twist: Let the OS be the owner of the portal from which the content is viewed, but allow the content to be freely controlled by the user. Some websites like Facebook have tried to adhere to this concept allowing for a proliferation of applications that run the gamut from mundane through powerful, intermixed with user-supplied social content. The challenge is this: even though Facebook provides access to videos from users, YouTube is just easier for the user to make use of them.

As we align this paradigm with the typical device OS and UI, we discover that perhaps this new User Interface needs to take on several personas, adapting to the needs of the user depending on what it has learned from their past interactions. By being ‘smart’ and learning how its owner utilizes it, UIs can become helpful and fun to use. There are many users who never need nor use features of their so-called ‘smart’ phones, so why are these features constantly intruding on what the user actually requires.

How many times in the past have you needed to quickly check something on your computer only to discover your computer is determined to perform updates and other tasks. Given that my desktop computer should ‘know’ that I’m working during the day, it should be smart enough to propose these intrusive acts at times when the normal use would not be interrupted.

As we move forward from desktop computers through smartphones, tablets and superphones, it seems all too apparent that the one differentiator will not be ‘user interface’ but ‘user understanding’. Perhaps by applying the concepts introduced by the modern Web 2.0 world, we will finally reach that all-elusive truly ‘user friendly’ experience.

Cheers,

Stuart

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Custom User Interfaces on Android

One of the nice features about Android is that you can use the operating system to power your device, but the user doesn’t need to know about it. If you know your way around the system, anything can be tweaked or modified (unless it’s a mobile phone), provided you’re willing to accept and manage the limitations those changes may introduce.

One area which can benefit greatly from modification is the user interface engine. There is a new trend in user interface design for interactive devices which are much more fluid and organic than what is typically seen on Android, Apple, or BlackBerry smart-phones these days. The pieces making up the interface are much more dynamic: they can change shape or take on a completely new appearance, they are animated most of the time instead of just some of the time, there are 3D elements having both casual and pronounced roles, they employ image effects like blurring to provide a softer feel to the transition, they use particle engines to give the experience a reactive feel and they introduce interactive layers on top of streaming video which feel natural.

These new trends are quite impressive and beautiful when you see them in action, but painful to develop when trying to make use of a typical user interface framework. It doesn’t mean those frameworks are wrong or not required, indeed, it is often the opposite. Most of the time they are needed, but when you really want to stand out from the crowd, when you want your product to make a big splash and get noticed, customization is often the way to go. In a UI engine, there is an ideal level of functionality needed where these kinds of animations, transitions, and special effects can be easily expressed and modified, where the component pieces can change visually and adapt to different technology layers. It’s a fine line and it’s rather cumbersome to accomplish using the top three mobile platforms, unless you have an engine under the hood capable of powering those custom interfaces.

Luckily, the YOUi Labs uSwish engine can work on a variety of platforms, including Android, and is currently being used to build those vibrant new interfaces. Typically, it complements the existing toolkit rather than replaces it, so existing applications continue to function normally and application programmers can still make use of the standard components provided in their platform’s SDK.

– Michael Gale

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Head Tracking and User Interfaces

One of the key areas for improvement in modern interfaces is coming in the form of 3D. Of course, most of the 3D being implemented is used for transitions, animations and other optical candy. A truly magnificent interface improvement would be to make use of the perception of depth to allow for ‘layered’ content. For example, perhaps I can have a small weather application that runs ‘under’ the clock on my tablet – top center, always in view. Normally I would see the clock, but by turning the tablet to the side I can look ‘under’ the clock and see the weather information – all without changing anything about the current application or mode of the device.

How would this work? Well, let’s consider head tracking, or simply changing the content being displayed according to the users angle of view. Here is a video of the concept in action:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SDGG9HhbgQ

With this concept applied to user interfaces, a simple action of tilting the device would allow viewing additional content or information. This could be expanded to specialized applications such as mapping, or even email showing thread history behind the current view.

Given the current market move towards large display tablets, making efficient use of the available real estate is all too apparent. By using head tracking or device angle tracking more content can be presented, and available to the user without additional interface complexity.

Working with various gesture detection systems makes it obvious to us this will be a feature of the next-generation of high-end devices. By making optimal use of the concept we can create an interface where the user becomes one with the device, totally immersed and comfortable in the virtual world it provides.

 

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Are New “Android OSs” the Answer to Goog-rola?

The past few days have been very interesting for anyone who cares about the cellphone industry.  The owners of Android, the clear OS winner for any phone manufacturer to choose today, have gone out and purchased a major competitor to all its customers.  Some are calling this new beast the Goog-rola, and like Godzilla, I think it will be causing some big disruption in Asia.

I’m not going to debate just how far back all the other vendors will be with Motorola now an ‘insider’,  that is an issue even if by appearance only.  I understand why Google made this move, each of the 6000 patents cost pretty much the same as the Nortel patents they wanted, and working closely with each device ODM one at a time has proven to work well for Google.  This of course positions them closer to the Apple model of a tighter integration between hardware and software, something we regularly point out as key to a successful device.  The question is how do all the other vendors; Samsung, HTC, Sony, etc., compete against an increasingly closed Android system.

I think Grid 10, even if the execution is not there yet, has the right approach.  They have created, for any and all relevant points of view, a new OS.  The reviewer was not able to find any Android pieces, they even recreated all the stock apps (calendar, email client, etc.).  Now this is no small task, but if you can get an OS of the calibre of Android and by adding a new UI, have a whole new OS to call your own, that is a bargain.   You will still be able to use the existing app store of course, no one wants to try and build another developer community today.  A not so apparent, but very relevant benefit to this approach, is that you untie yourself from the Android release cycles.  One of the biggest complaints we hear from ODMs is that they have so little time between source code drop of the new Android release and shipping.  Dell and others have already seen the instant death a device experiences shipping even a minor release behind the latest.   Google of course loves this as they don’t want people messing with the UI, they want to push their agenda and business model first.  However, you need to choose a UI platform very carefully before embarking on this size of the project and I’m proudly biased to the uSwish product.

Have a look at the review of the Grid 10, the company has been marred with controversy in its past but I am certain they are paving the way forward for all OEMs that plan to stick with Android.

http://thisismynext.com/2011/08/16/fusion-garage-grid-10-pictures-video-preview/

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Google Buys Moto, is this the Beginning of the End for Android?

Check out this blog post “supercharging-android-google-to-acquire“ by Andy Rubin on the Motorola Mobility Acquisition.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/supercharging-android-google-to-acquire.html

So Google finally buys a handset manufacturer and is now officially competing with the ecosystem they created. If you’re an existing Android handset manufacturer you have to wonder how much preferential treatment the Motorola team will get. They will most certainly have first access to new source code.

Will Google always be first to market with the latest and greatest Android OS version?

I can’t help but think back on the Nokia/Symbian experiment. Why wasn’t Symbian widely adopted by the mobile industry? You could argue the technology wasn’t right for what the market wanted but the ownership model was perhaps even a bigger issue. With Nokia being the majority shareholder of Symbian it was clear to all other manufacturers that they would always be second class citizens. Choosing Symbian meant you were happy to be second, at best, behind Nokia.

Who wants to be second behind Google/Motorola?

So why did Google Acquire Motorola and risk alienating their ecosystem? To beef up the patent war chest? I don’t buy it. If that was the case, they would kill off the manufacturing business and there are no signs of this happening.

Perhaps it’s Google’s attempt at standardizing the UI? With their own hardware they can guarantee at least one OEM is not going to change or modify their UI to help differentiate their product. If anything, this move will push other manufactures to increase their efforts to differentiate their products to stand out from the standard Google devices.

If you were a phone manufacturer, what would you do with this news? I would hedge my bets and look at other OSs on the market. Look for Windows Phone 7 to pick up some device wins and I would not be surprise if HP’s Web OS gets a boost from this news.

Don Liberty

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