Posts tagged ‘UI Design’

Cursor: text

1 February, 2010 | admin | Comments

I’ve come across this a lot of time myself and it made me realise that there is a need to ‘think’ on this issue. To get to the point, just look at the image below and see what has been typed in the text-box.

I’m guessing, your answer probably might be ”yes.. il” or “yes.. ll” or ”yes..tl” or ”yes..H”  and it keeps on going!

What I’m trying to point out is that, the text pointer there shades the text typed which created an usability issue. Usually, since the text-box may not be active at the time the user wants to type something, the user brings the pointer right where he wants to type and then click inside the text-box area. This usually leaves the ‘text pointer’ few chars away from the starting point and as the user types on, the characters itself got covered up as can be seen on the image above.
Read the rest of this entry »

A First Principle

27 December, 2009 | admin | Comments

The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target.

-Fitts’ Law

New Orkut Vs Facebook

10 November, 2009 | admin | Comments

With the launch of the new Orkut, there’s been a lot of expectation from the orkut lovers considering the ongoing competition between the two gaint social networking sites, Orkut and Facebook. Being among one of the few users who got the priviledge to use the new orkut in it’s early phase, I’ve come across numerous flows, or simply un-expected structural non user friendly systems and here, as a viewpoint from a User Experience Designer, I’m giving certain things that needs to be revamp at the earliest.

1) Commenting System

The very first thing that I’m going to talk about is the Fb style commenting system which is just introduced newly with the New version of orkut.

New Orkut Comment Feature

New Orkut Comment Feature


Read the rest of this entry »

Sibi Media Player: an innovative media player 2

5 July, 2009 | admin | Comments

Well, the previous post let you know the main structure of the media player. If you’ve not gone through it, check the post at Sibi Media Player: an innovative media player 1 before continuing this post.

Now, let’s get closer to the Player Control Area.

Control Area

Control Area

Like I told you earlier, the image above speaks. ;)

Playlist

Playlist

The player will look as below.

The Player

The Player

So, that’s it for the present. The UX designs for the player is still under development. If you’ve your say, don’t forget to leave me a comment.

Sibi Media Player: an innovative media player 1

5 July, 2009 | admin | Comments

Sibi Media Player is an innovative media player designed keeping in mind, the word – Simple.

The player is mainly developed for the emerging mobile market although a PC (or Mac) version of the player sure do play a major role in its marketing strategies. And accordingly,  I can’t give you all the details about the player, but through this post you can get a glimpse of the UI for the PC version of the player.

The player consists of 3 main parts or modules, of which this particular post focus only on the main player module. The player is designed as an application to be made available online, that means, the media player is an ONLINE MEDIA PLAYER. So let’s get to the UI.

SIBI Media Player Modules

SIBI Media Player Modules

The above diagram talks!! I guess you have got the hunch why the Media Player is developed as an online application?? The player has the options to upload your music collection online, manage it, create playlist from your own collection and blah blah. The music has to be streamed online, such that you don’t have to carry a high capacity storage music player wherever you go. Personally, I don’t own a music player which have the storage capacity of ~40gb which is my collection in my PC.

If you are a music lover and a frequest travellor, as most of us are, you might have faced the problem of wondering which songs to put in your PMP? This is rather a hard task coz of the thousand songs, (remember, one’s music collection increases with each passing day), you won’t be  point out which songs you are going to hear during your tour; and it’s not that you can carry your system with you wherever you go!!

Ok, leave it…let me get to the UI.

The Main Player Module

The Main Player Module

The main player area is divided into 3 sub areas

  • Player Control
  • Playlist/Current Playing Info
  • Playlist Control

1) The Player Control Area consists of the buttons for Previous, Play, Stop, Next, Shuffle, Repeat, Volume, and equalizer slide in/out.

The Player Control

The Player Control

2) The Playlist/Current Playing Info are combined together in one place to reduce screen area. Unlike typical media players from Windows media player to itunes, the playlist and the current playing info display is separate eating up more screen property. SIBI playlist structure reduces the valuable screen property.

The Playlist

The Playlist

3) The Playlist Controls are pretty intuitive and simple. The almost all of the controls can be done through keyboard shortcuts. To inform the users about these shortcuts, the TIPS are displayed in a slide show format.

The Playlist Controls

The Playlist Controls

For more, check the next post Sibi Media Player: an innovative media player 2