The Symbian^4 User Interface UI concept proposal generated an astounding amount of interest. Enrique Gallar, a Principal Designer in User Experience at Nokia coded Wordle.net and Yahoo! Pipes, along with the input from Symbian Foundation’s developer forums, blog responses, and popular Symbian blogs to generate the word cloud above to this paragraph. Please read this posting through to the end, where two lovely videos demonstrating S^4 are linked.
It’s telling that the largest word on the cloud is “want,” which can mean that the Symbian community wants Symbian^4, or they want even more. Both answers are great: firstly, the proposal was approved by the UI Council. Secondly, as part of an open source effort, we have the opportunity to keep evolving and improving the UI (and the rest of the platform).
Other words that show up prominently include “like,” “button,” “back,” and “app.” Like I’ll take for the obvious: people think the proposal is going in the right direction. Like could also be comparison between Symbian^4 and other smartphone platforms. Again, both are good. Comparisons enable us to focus on our strengths and how we stand out. App is important to the success of the platform–a wide variety of excellent applications that make great use of the new UI paradigms will make for very happy users (and very successful developers).
The forum has a lot of great community feedback, some of which I have paraphrased here.
- marcelobarrosalmeida commented that the UI looks challenging for single-handed use.
- nseriesfreak7 wants a persistent scroll bar, since long lists will require lots of flicks.
- nseriesfreak7 (who was such a prolific commenter that he features in the tag cloud above) also commented about the soft Back button, preferring a hard key.
- brian_____ asked about the absence of more indicators on screen, and many other good things.
- brian_____ also commented on the perhaps excessive height of the title bar.
And that’s just a summary of the Forum. There are lots of other good comments, so please have a look for yourself. Rest assured that the UI Council and the contributor – Nokia in this case – have been reading your comments, and the design is evolving.
Other comments from the community centred around the chosen font and the base theme, as well as the “dots” indicator showing which homescreen page is active. The font rendered in the proposal was Nokia’s proprietary font. Symbian Foundation does not yet have a “platform” font, leaving it to device creators to choose their own. For the Symbian platform-themed stills below, I chose to use Verdana, just for illustration purposes – since it was designed for on-screen use and shows off the Symbian^4 UI nicely. Lastly, the dots can be themed, and in our demo stills and videos, I chose rounded boxes, with the active box slightly larger than the others, all of which are slightly transparent to the wallpaper underneath.
Lastly, I promised some Symbian^4 videos. Be sure to play them at 720p!
First, the Symbian^4 Homescreen:
And also, an exploration of the Applications Collection and Photo viewisng on Symbian^4:
You can learn more about the UI Roadmap at http://developer.symbian.org/wiki/index.php/Roadmap_for_UI.
[...] completo rispetto a Symbian^3, avendo inoltre il supporto nativo alle librerie QT. Recentemente il blog ufficiale Symbian ha postato due nuovi video che mostrano il concept aggiornato dell’interfaccia grafica di [...]
I am not sure if the UI council has the pulse on the general public sentiment concerning these Symbian^4 UI concept videos.
I still believe and hope that the final UI will be much more enticing than this concepts.
Currently most of the symbian users and online community has been very underwhelmed by these first videos. If you look at any online forum, where these videos were posted intially before few weeks, more than 90% were disappointed, since so far UI-wise there is not much difference than what is already out there by other competitors that too several months or years before.
But i believe, final product will look different than this concept.
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One request that I have is that there also be some sort of transparent design philosophy behind the widgets and layouts. In Apple’s UI guidelines, they are clear that some kinds applications work best with one UI schema, while others are more appropriate for other schemas (e.g. Mail.app/navigation app v. Stocks.app/widget.app). I don’t think that Symbian/Nokia should adopts Apple’s guidelines, but I do think that some level of thought about the different “species” of apps that might live in the S^4 ecosystem would be useful to help guide independent developer to achieve a level of consistency and user-comfort that is currently lacking on many mobile platforms.
I don’t understand, if there is a hardware button for going back, why is it implemented at top right corner on-screen? Why is it at all needed on screen if hardware has one?
Also,why battery and signal strength bars are clubbed and so unattractive?
What is that dropdown against operator logo bar?
I hope someone can think of better UI than this.
I like symbian a lot but just don’t ruin it by copying others. Just keep it simple as much as it can be.
Unfortunately uncompetitive.
hope u have look wt others have done and build up S^4
[...] Symbian^4 User Interface Update | Symbian Blog [...]
[...] Scott Weiss, User Interface Manager of Symbian Foundation has posted an update of the progress for Symbian^4 UI [...]
Symbian^4 Team,
Please don’t neglect the Brilliant ANDROID idea that displays more notification info when you tap the title-bar. For Symbian, just tapping the Signal/Battery meter should do the trick to appear not copying Android.
Notifications should include:
messages, download progress bars, bluetooth/wifi/data status, etc
By pleasing everyone you get what you just showed above, and that is putting everyone to sleep.
Good work guys! Looks actually wery good. I can’t wait to get one of those Symbian^4 phones. .
“don’t understand, if there is a hardware button for going back, why is it implemented at top right corner on-screen? Why is it at all needed on screen if hardware has one?”
ir would be WERY bad design flaw if there would not be that back-button on screen. It would be confusing as hell if it would not be there. It also would not be good to require use of hardware button. Going back must be possible using touch UI itself. It’s nice that hardware buttons are available so you can use those, but use of hardware buttons should not be only way to eg. go back. Everything must be controlable directly using touch screen too.
I’m 100% sure that most of the users do aggree with me and only small minority would remove that back button from screen.
“Also,why battery and signal strength bars are clubbed and so unattractive?”
Unatractive? Eh? In my opinion those are just fine. Most important is that any bars or gauges like that are clear, easy to read and practical. And those bars are just fine.
“What is that dropdown against operator logo bar?”"
In my opinion it’s clear what it is. it opens menu.
“Currently most of the symbian users and online community has been very underwhelmed by these first videos”
Not true. Only those who don’t understand that these are concept cideos not the final product.
“there is not much difference than what is already out there by other competitors that too several months or years before”
I really don’t understand attitude like that. First some people complain that others have better UI and feature like this and that. And now those same people complain that Symbian has similar UI features as others… Sorry but i really donät understand you. It seems that for some people nothing is ok.
The hardware back button must be there to make up for the bad placement of the on-screen back button in portrait mode. The on-screen back button exists because sometimes it isn’t the back button–I guess sometimes it will be a close button. And, a close button is needed because process management on the phone is will still be done manually by the user, instead of 100% automatically like every other new mobile OS. The on-screen back button placement is bad because the UI was designed and optimized for landscape mode, not portrait mode.
Mike, people understand these are concept videos. A lot of people don’t like the concept on which the design is based. Fundamentally, it is very similar to the UI Symbian has now, just rearranged. The design still puts an unnecessary burden of complexity on the user. It is the same problem that Android phones are having–techies can tolerate that complexity but most people would rather just have something comprehensively designed to be easy to use.
Definitely there are large groups of people that want something totally new, something just like the iPhone, or something just like something else they’ve seen. No designer can make all those groups happy at the same time. But, making pundits happy isn’t really the goal of UX design. The goal is to provide the best experience for the user. And, the only way that can be done is with an iterative design process with extensive usability/acceptance testing.
I think Nokia and Symbian could gain more supporters for the design by showing us developers how it was tested and validated with real users, like Microsoft did with its presentations on the Windows 7 UI, the Office UI, the Windows 7 Phone UI, etc. For example, it would be very interesting to understand if/how testing showed that users get a better experience with no clock and no indicators on-screen, and with two back buttons instead of one.
These are concept videos. And as concept videos people should treat them. They are in the good direction. Keep up the good work.
I like the idea of having a one-tap-away step for detailed status messages on the homescreen.
I am really looking forward getting my hands on the first Symbian3 and than symbian4 device. after two years, it is time to see a nice and slick UI
Not impressed. Symbian 4 just seems a more beautiful version of Symbian 1, almost like any ordinary SonyEricsson device with Symbian. I do like, though, Symbian 3 homescreen, with very organized widgets. The rest should be also evolving or innovating — multitask alone won’t be a killer feature if it doesn’t come along with other innovative stuff.
[...] | blog.symbian.org [...]
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brian___, by 100% automatically, are you referring to Android’s terrible task management system. It ‘intelligently’ chooses which app to close when you reach the six app limit. How about, uh, not doing that! Also how about, if some resource hogger is running and interfering with audio playback or some other activity, you let me do that?
Android is not a good example of handling multitasking – and iPhone and WP7S are no example at all. Maybe Apple will come up with a solution to this better than the rest in iPhone OS 4.0, but don’t try to pretend Google have.
Besides, on any Symbian device with a sensible amount of RAM (Satio, i8910, Vivaz) it’s barely necessary to close apps anyway. My task list on the Satio now?:
- Camera (9Mp)
- Opera Mobile
- Podcatcher
- Call log
- Gravity
- RoadSync (Exchange client)
- Google Search
Yes, the icing on the cake would be for Symbian – when it actually does have to close an app (and I’m talking Symbian^3 here. Let’s see what effect data paging has before going on about how common it is for apps to shut down), to choose which one(s) intelligently. As it stands though, the proposition that Android is better than Symbian in multitasking is simply ridiculous!
I got lost in typing the post above – where I said:
“how about, if some resource hogger is running and interfering with audio playback or some other activity, you let me do that?”
I meant:
“how about, if some resource hogger is running and interfering with audio playback or some other activity, you let me close it?”
“As it stands though, the proposition that Android is better than Symbian in multitasking is simply ridiculous!”
I have to disagree. In my experience, the Android (Motorola DROID, Android 2.0) implementation is a much more fluid and usable experience. Part of the reason behind this may be that Android has a much better third-party notification system than the shipping Symbian devices that enables a much more natural task flow. I swipe up to the toolbar and find the app I want and click it. In addition to the app icon, I also get some textual context as well (latest text message, new e-mail count, etc.). Sometimes, the available context is sufficient to accomplish the task I wanted (“what was that most recent text?”) that a full app switch becomes unnecessary.
In contrast, on shipping S60 devices, I have to hold down the home button for a second (if the hold isn’t long enough, I get booted to the home or applications screen). After a brief delay, I get a grid of application icons without any context and I select the icon I want to switch to another app.
On Android, I can get to where I want under a second. On Symbian, simply holding down the home button to get to the point where I can make the choice takes a second. In terms of getting around, Android has a much zippier interface than anything shipping with Symbian right now. This can be improved on the Symbian side by not forcing the home/app button to serve dual roles and by allowing third party apps to expose more context in the switcher interface
Now in terms of the underlying OS internals that manage the multitasking, Symbian may be superior. However, any such head start is lost by the time it’s exposed to users.
Also, your characterization of Android only running 6 apps, then shutting some down randomly is somewhat disingenuous in this context. Symbian applications are traditional monolithic applications where Android “applications” are effectively collections of smaller applications. I haven’t noticed a situation where Android has shut down a user-facing application (activity), so your “6 app” contention may be technically correct. However, this ignores the service side of things where the Android “app” is still effectively running in the background. On my Droid, I have the following services running simultaneously:
GTalk
Mail
Listen (podcast client)
SlideScreen (alternative UI)
Finance & Stock Quote updater
RSS feed monitor
Weather updater
These are in addition to any user facing apps that I may have open at the same time. So, the “six app limit” really isn’t an accurate or relevant criticism of the Android task management system in the context of user interfaces.
There is just no pleasing some people. Seems like Symbian is damned no matter what. The UI concept looks pretty neat, smooth and very user friendly. Its a worlds apart from the clunky Symbian one and is very much welcome.
Please keep up the good work and ignore the arrogant vocal minority who think only in terms of the iPhone forgetting that the mass market belongs to Symbian. Well done Symbian.
“As it stands though, the proposition that Android is better than Symbian in multitasking is simply ridiculous!”
I have to disagree. In my experience, the Android (Motorola DROID, Android 2.0) implementation is a much more fluid and usable experience. Part of the reason behind this may be that Android has a much better third-party notification system than the shipping Symbian devices that enables a much more natural task flow. I swipe down from the toolbar and find the app I want and click it. In addition to the app icon, I also get some textual context as well (latest text message, new e-mail count, etc.). Sometimes, the available context is sufficient to accomplish the task I wanted (“what was that most recent text?”) that a full app switch becomes unnecessary.
In contrast, on shipping S60 devices, I have to hold down the home button for a second (if the hold isn’t long enough, I get booted to the home or applications screen). After a brief delay, I get a grid of application icons without any context and I select the icon I want to switch to another app.
On Android, I can get to where I want under a second. On Symbian, simply holding down the home button to get to the point where I can make the choice takes a second. In terms of getting around, Android has a much zippier interface than anything shipping with Symbian right now. This can be improved on the Symbian side by not forcing the home/app button to serve dual roles and by allowing third party apps to expose more context in the switcher interface.
Now in terms of the underlying OS internals that manage the multitasking, Symbian may be superior. However, any such head start is lost by the time it’s exposed to users. I’m not criticizing Symbian from an Operating Systems design perspective, but rather from a User Experience design perspective.
Also, your characterization of Android only running 6 apps, then shutting some down randomly is somewhat disingenuous in this context. Symbian applications are traditional monolithic applications where Android “applications” are effectively collections of smaller applications. I haven’t noticed a situation where Android has shut down a user-facing application (activity), so your “6 app” contention may be technically correct. However, this ignores the service side of things where the Android “app” is still *effectively* running in the background. On my Droid, I have the following services running simultaneously:
GTalk
Mail
Listen (podcast client)
SlideScreen (alternative UI)
Finance & Stock Quote updater
RSS feed monitor
Weather updater
These are in addition to any user facing apps that I may have open at the same time. So, the “six app limit” really isn’t an accurate or relevant criticism of the Android task management system in the context of user interfaces. Comparing Symbian’s more traditional applications to Android’s fineer-grained applications (if they can even be called such) is comparing apples to oranges.
Before jumping on me for being a Symbian hater, let me state again that I like the way that the UI work is going and I agree with Tochi that this is a great improvement over the current state of things. I’m looking forward to a UI layer that better highlights Symbian’s underlying strengths. My only complaint is the lag time involved from seeing work like this and being able to get my hands on a device for testing and development myself. However, I find this lag more tolerable than Apple’s “let’s make everything secret until the last minute” model of doing things. Keep up the good work, but let’s not deceive ourselves over the strengths of other platforms. The other guys are doing things that are worth learning from as well.
(I have an earlier version of this comment that is stuck in the moderation queue. Please feel free to delete it.)